Star Wars: Beyond Tatooine

For the forest moon of Endor, Return of the Jedi went looking for a real forest. The crew moved to northern California in early 1982 and shot the Endor scenes in Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park, on private land near Smith River; the park's Cheatham Grove, a mile-long trail through the redwoods, is listed as one of the filming sites. The trees that streak past during the speeder chase were shot the hard way: Garrett Brown, inventor of the Steadicam, filmed them at less than one frame per second. The trail is still there.

Location precision: The Endor scenes were shot on private land near Smith River; the pin marks Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park.

Visitor guidance: The park lies 20 miles south of Eureka, then 17 miles east of Fortuna on State Route 36; the Cheatham Grove trail is about a mile.

Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala retreat to a house on a lake in Attack of the Clones: attachments are forbidden by the Jedi Code and they fall in love anyway. The Villa del Balbianello is that house — it played their lake retreat, though the film's exterior was replaced by computer graphics, so the retreat on screen is not quite the building you can walk into today. The villa began as a Franciscan monastery of the 13th century, which Cardinal Durini turned into a summer house in 1787. It is now the most visited of the FAI's 52 properties.

Visitor guidance: A Fondo Ambiente Italiano property at Lenno on Lake Como, and the FAI's most visited.

Seville already had a building fit for a palace city: the Plaza de España, a huge half-circle behind a moat, reached by four bridges that stand for the ancient kingdoms of Spain. In Attack of the Clones it appears in exterior shots of the City of Theed on the planet Naboo, where the Jedi Council sends Anakin to protect Padmé and escort her home. The plaza was built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. Its tiled alcoves for each Spanish province are still a favourite backdrop for visitors' portraits.

Visitor guidance: In Maria Luisa Park in Seville; the buildings were renovated and adapted for use as government offices.

In The Force Awakens, BB-8 escapes with the map and encounters Rey, a solitary scavenger on the desert planet Jakku. The desert was real: a second unit began filming in secret in the United Arab Emirates around Liwa Oasis, on the northern edge of the Rub' al Khali about 150 km southwest of Abu Dhabi city, and principal photography started in Abu Dhabi on 16 May 2014. Large sets were built on location — a shuttle-like spacecraft, a large tower, a big market — and explosives were used to blast a crater.

Location precision: Filming took place around Liwa Oasis but no source names the spot; the pin marks the oasis.

The Last Jedi needed a planet where a Jedi has been hiding alone for years, and the crew found a real one: Skellig Michael, a twin-pinnacled crag 11.6 kilometres west of the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, carrying a monastery founded between the 6th and 8th centuries. Second-unit photography began here on September 14, 2015, because this coast can only be shot in the right season. In the film Rey comes to Ahch-To to recruit Luke Skywalker; he refuses, on the grounds that the Jedi should end. Visitors still climb the 600 stone steps, capped at 180 a day.

Visitor guidance: Boats run to the island from May to October, weather permitting; the Office of Public Works allows 180 visitors a day.

Crait's white battlefield was shot on the largest salt flat on Earth: Salar de Uyuni, about 10,582 square kilometres of Bolivia's Potosí Department, at 3,656 metres near the crest of the Andes. In the film, when the First Order arrives, Poe, Finn and Rose attack with obsolete speeders, and this crust plays the battlefield: an 8-metre layer of salt so flat that its elevation varies by less than a metre across the whole area. Today the Salar is a popular tourist destination, with hotels built in the area.

Location precision: The source names the salt flat, not the stretch of it that was used; the pin marks the Salar de Uyuni.

Visitor guidance: A popular tourist destination; the town of Uyuni is the usual gateway.