The Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth in New Zealand

Scouting from the air in 1998, Jackson spotted the Alexander family's sheep and beef farm near Matamata and thought it looked "like a slice of ancient England". Hedges and gardens were planted a year before filming so that Hobbiton would feel lived in. The set was meant to be pulled down afterwards, and partly was, but heavy rain saved some of the hobbit holes, and the family began showing visitors round. Rebuilt to last for The Hobbit in 2010, it now has a working Green Dragon inn.

Visitor guidance: The set can only be visited on a guided tour; book ahead, especially in summer.

On the road out of the Shire, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin scramble off the track and hide under a tree root as a Black Rider stops above them, sniffing the air. The woods were not in the Waikato at all but on Mount Victoria, the forested hill that rises right behind central Wellington. Wellington, home to Jackson's studios and Wētā Workshop, supplied many of the trilogy's locations, and this one is a short walk from the city centre. The summit lookout gives a sweeping view of the city and harbour.

Location precision: The scene was shot on the hill's wooded slopes; the pin marks the summit lookout.

Visitor guidance: Mount Victoria is a walk up from the city centre; signposted tracks run through the town-belt forest.

Wounded by a Morgul blade, Frodo is carried by Arwen at full gallop to the Ford of Bruinen, where she turns at the river and calls up a flood of white horses that sweeps the Black Riders away. The ford was filmed on the Arrow River near Arrowtown, an old gold-mining town outside Queenstown. A walking track follows the river from the town, and the Gladden Fields scenes were shot nearby at Wilcox Green.

Location precision: The crossing point isn't marked; the pin marks Arrowtown, from where riverside walks lead to the filming area.

Frodo wakes in Rivendell, the elven refuge where the Council of Elrond decides the Ring must go to Mordor and the Fellowship sets out. Its exteriors were built in Kaitoke Regional Park, in the hills north of Upper Hutt: a grassy clearing ringed by native forest, where the hobbit actors filmed their Rivendell scenes. The elven buildings were removed after filming, but the clearing is signposted from the car park and remains a favourite stop for fans.

Visitor guidance: The site is a short walk from the Kaitoke Regional Park car park off State Highway 2.

Edoras, the hilltop capital of Rohan where Gandalf frees King Théoden from Saruman's spell, stood on Mount Sunday, a lone rocky hill in the Rangitata valley of Canterbury's high country. The location was found by chance when a storm forced a scouting plane off course. The crew spent the best part of a year building a road, houses, stables and the Golden Hall on the summit, filmed for about three weeks in 1999, then removed everything. Only the hill and its mountain backdrop remain.

Visitor guidance: Park on Hakatere Potts Road and walk in to the hill; the valley is remote, so carry what you need.

In The Two Towers, Faramir's men find Gollum catching fish in the Forbidden Pool below their hidden refuge, and Frodo lures him out to save his life. The pool is Tawhai Falls, a small waterfall in Tongariro National Park, on the lower slopes of Mount Ruapehu. Its curtain of water falls into a dark pool surrounded by bush, close enough to the road that it is one of the easiest of all the film locations to reach, a few minutes' walk from the road below Whakapapa Village.

Visitor guidance: A ten-minute walk leads to the falls from the road about 4 km below Whakapapa Village.

In The Return of the King, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli ride to the Dimholt Road and the Paths of the Dead to summon an army of oath-breakers. Part of the approach was filmed among the Putangirua Pinnacles in the Wairarapa, a valley of tall earth pillars, or hoodoos, in the Aorangi Range, where rain has carved ancient gravel beds into fluted columns, some protected by a cap of harder rock. They erode by about a centimetre a year. Jackson had used them before, for the opening of his 1992 horror comedy Braindead.

Visitor guidance: A track from the reserve car park off Cape Palliser Road follows the stream bed up to the pinnacles.

The near-perfect cone of Ngāuruhoe stood in for Mount Doom, where Frodo and Sam climb at last to destroy the Ring. It was New Zealand's most active volcano of the 20th century, with 45 eruptions, the last in 1977. For Ngāti Tūwharetoa, whose ancestor Ngātoro-i-rangi named it, the summit is tapu, sacred; in 2017 the Department of Conservation asked visitors not to climb the park's summits and tour operators to stop calling it "Mt Doom". Tongariro National Park is a World Heritage Site for both its nature and its culture.

Visitor guidance: The Tongariro Alpine Crossing passes beneath the cone; please respect the request not to climb to the summit.