Sex and the City: Carrie's New York

Carrie Bradshaw lives at the fictional address of 245 E. 73rd Street, on the Upper East Side. The real stoop is on Perry Street in Greenwich Village: the production settled on 66 Perry Street from Season 3, for its distinctive staircase. The 2008 film uses it too, with Carrie selling the apartment toward a Fifth Avenue penthouse with Big, then buying it back after he abandons her at the altar. The stoop drew so many visitors that the owners installed chains across it.

Carrie's plan for a small, intimate wedding swells into an extravaganza, and while returning overdue books she realises the perfect venue would be her local library. In the film that means the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, whose entrance is flanked by a pair of stone lions, the library's icon. The building opened on 23 May 1911.

Visitor guidance: Public library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street; the lions guard the main entrance.

On the eve of the wedding the party gathers for the rehearsal dinner at a restaurant whose deceptively minimal slate-grey exterior hides the Chinoiserie Room, two storeys high, where a banquet table seats 36. Steve arrives here to plead his case, and Miranda bitterly tells Big that marriage ruins everything, a remark she lives to regret. The film used Buddakan on 9th Avenue in Chelsea.

Visitor guidance: A working restaurant at 75 9th Avenue in Chelsea; book ahead.

After the wedding that wasn't, Carrie hires an assistant, Louise, to help her reorganise her life. The two commiserate about broken hearts in Bemelmans Bar, in the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side. The bar opened in 1947 and is known for its distinctive Art Deco decor, including murals of Madeline painted by Ludwig Bemelmans.

Visitor guidance: Inside the Carlyle Hotel, 35 East 76th Street, on the Upper East Side.

Samantha breaks up with Smith and moves back to New York, and she is reminded how much she misses the city when her white fur is doused with red paint outside a Fashion Week marquee. The tent was put up in Bryant Park just for the film's Vivienne Westwood show. The park lies between 40th and 42nd Streets, behind the New York Public Library, and its carousel, Le Carrousel Magique, is glimpsed in the opening credits.

Visitor guidance: Public park in Midtown; the carousel stands in the southern section.

With her marriage in pieces, Miranda talks with Carrie in a Central Park shelter, and Carrie encourages her to consider forgiving Steve. The setting is the wrought iron Ladies' Pavilion, built in 1871 as a trolley-stop shelter and now standing on Hernshead, a peninsula on the Lake's northwest shore near West 75th Street. Miranda and Steve go on to counselling and reconcile.

Visitor guidance: On the Hernshead promontory by the Central Park Lake, near West 75th Street.

Miranda follows her heart and meets Steve on the Brooklyn Bridge, the New York landmark that opened on 24 May 1883 as the first fixed crossing of the East River. A major tourist attraction since the day it opened, the bridge has become an icon of the city, and you can walk across it between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Visitor guidance: The pedestrian promenade between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Carrie and Big finally marry in a low-key ceremony at New York City Hall, in the simple original dress suit she had meant to wear before being given the Vivienne Westwood gown. City Hall is not what the cameras saw: the scene was filmed across the river at the Brooklyn Supreme Court Building, 360 Adams Street, which stands in for it. It is a working courthouse.