Stalker: Tarkovsky's Zone Near Tallinn

Before the trio enter the Zone, the film shows an old chemical factory called Flora in the centre of Tallinn, right beside the Rotermann salt storage. In the story, the Stalker has just met the Writer and the Professor in a rundown bar-café and warned them to do exactly what he says. The salt storage still stands and since 1996 has housed the Estonian Museum of Architecture, so the building next to the film's shot can be visited, even though the factory is the one that appeared on screen.

Location precision: The film used the Flora factory next door; the pin marks the Rotermann salt storage, which now holds the architecture museum.

Visitor guidance: The Museum of Estonian Architecture occupies the old salt storage.

A second shot just before the Zone was made at the former Tallinn Power Plant. Today the complex is the Tallinn Creative Hub, Kultuurikatel, a cultural organisation whose buildings are listed as architectural landmarks in Estonia's register of cultural monuments. A memorial plate for the film was set up here in 2008, and every year the hub hosts a Stalker Festival, so the film's afterlife is easy to find on site.

Visitor guidance: The film's memorial plate was set up here in 2008.

The government has fenced off the Zone and jails stalkers who guide people across its border, so the trio must slip past the military guards by following a train through the gate, then ride into the Zone's vast wilderness on a railway work car. That gate was filmed in Lasnamäe, next to Punane Street behind the Idakeskus shopping centre. The district is best known for its pre-fabricated concrete apartment blocks, which makes it an apt backdrop for the film's last everyday place before the wilderness.

Location precision: Only the street and the Idakeskus; the pin marks that area of Lasnamäe.

The central part of the film, the walk through the Zone, was shot in a few days at two deserted hydropower plants on the Jägala river near Tallinn. The film's Zone is full of abandoned industrial facilities, corpses, guns and tanks. The novel Roadside Picnic, on which the film is only loosely based, has six Zones left by the Visitation, an extraterrestrial event, and is set around one of them in Harmont, a fictitious town in an unspecified English-speaking country. Sound designer Vladimir Sharun recalled a chemical plant upriver pouring poisonous liquids downstream.

Location precision: Two plants on the Jägala river are named without exact spots; the pin marks the Jägala hydroelectric area.

Other shots were filmed near the Tallinn–Narva highway bridge on the Pirita river. The sources do not say which scenes, and the exact camera positions are not recorded, so treat this stop as a pointer to the river rather than a marked spot.

Location precision: The source names only the highway bridge on the Pirita river; the pin marks the river in Tallinn, not the bridge.

As the Stalker returns home with his wife and daughter at the end of the film, the Iru Power Plant stands in the background. Some shots within the Zone were also filmed in Maardu next to it. The plant's first unit was commissioned in 1978, and in 2013 a waste-to-energy unit was added. It is a working plant, so view it from outside.