Frankenstein: Geneva, Ingolstadt and the Alps

Victor's childhood is spent in the family's country house at Belrive, on the eastern shore of the lake and a little over a league from the city. The family also keep a house in Geneva, but they live "principally" at Belrive, and Victor remembers his parents' lives there as passed "in considerable seclusion". It is the calm home he later leaves for Ingolstadt, and the place he keeps returning to in memory as everything goes wrong.

Location precision: The novel gives only "Belrive" on the lake's eastern shore; the pin marks the lakeside commune of Collonge-Bellerive, whose name is the closest match, not a known house.

At seventeen Victor is sent to the university of Ingolstadt and arrives to see "the high white steeple of the town". Here he builds his creature, about eight feet tall, in "a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house", and brings it to life "on a dreary night of November". Today Wikipedia links the story to the Alte Anatomie, the old anatomy building that is now a museum of medical history; the novel itself names only the town.

Location precision: The novel names Ingolstadt but no building; the pin marks the town.

On Thursday 7 May the family walks in Plainpalais. Dusk falls and little William, playing with his brother Ernest, has run off to hide and does not come back. "Victor, he is murdered!" his father writes. Later Victor crosses the lake in a storm to the spot and sees the creature among the rocks of Mont Salêve, the hill south of the plain. Plainpalais is now a large public square, and a statue of the creature stands near its skatepark.

Location precision: The novel names Plainpalais but not the exact place William was found; the pin marks the district.

Visitor guidance: Plaine de Plainpalais is a large public square in Geneva.

Wretched after William's death, Victor rides a mule up to the summit of Montanvert and sits on the rock "that overlooks the sea of ice". He walks out onto the glacier, a field of ice almost a league wide that takes him nearly two hours to cross. Then a figure bounds towards him over the crevices at superhuman speed: the creature he made. Shelley's Mer de Glace is the same glacier above Chamonix that carries the name today.

Pressed by the creature to build it a companion, Victor travels through the northern highlands and settles on "one of the remotest of the Orkneys" for his second laboratory. The island is "hardly more than a rock" beaten by the waves, with five inhabitants. Here he sets up his laboratory to make a female creature, and destroys her unfinished. The novel never names the island.

Location precision: The novel does not name the island; the pin marks the middle of the Orkney archipelago.

After the wedding, Victor and Elizabeth set out by water to sleep that night at Evian. As they approach, "the spire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it". It is the calm before the book's cruellest scene: that night the creature strangles Elizabeth. Évian-les-Bains is now a lakeside spa town.

Location precision: The novel names Evian but no inn or house; the pin marks the town.