The Count of Monte Cristo: From Marseille to Paris

The story opens on this hill. On 24 February 1815 the lookout at Notre-Dame de la Garde signals the three-master Pharaon coming into Marseille. Aboard is her young first mate, Edmond Dantès. Danglars and Fernand draft an anonymous letter denouncing him as a Bonapartist, and at his engagement party a magistrate arrives: "I arrest you in the name of the law!" The hill has long served as a lookout point and a landmark for sailors, and the rock rises 162 metres above the sea.

Visitor guidance: The basilica is open to the public; about a million and a half people come each year, many just for the view.

Inside the château a prisoner loses his name: the unhappy young man is no longer called Edmond Dantès, he is now number 34. Then Abbé Faria, a scholarly Italian priest, digs an escape tunnel that mistakenly ends in Dantès' cell and teaches him languages, history, mathematics, medicine and science. When Faria dies, Dantès takes the place of the dead in the burial sack, and the guards throw it into the sea: "The sea is the cemetery of the Château d'If." In reality no one is known to have escaped; today a rough-hewn dungeon is kept here in Dantès' honour.

Visitor guidance: Take a boat from Marseille's Old Port; the fortress has been open to the public since 23 September 1890.

Under the water Dantès rips open the sack, and with a mighty leap he rises to the surface of the sea. The islands of Tiboulen and Lemaire lie a league from the château; he reaches Tiboulen, which he knows is barren and without shelter. The real swim is about 7 km, though the old Cassini map used by Dumas's researcher Auguste Maquet shows the islands only about 3 km apart. Genoese smugglers rescue him when he claims to be a shipwrecked sailor. Tiboulen is an uninhabited French island today.

Faria's last gift is a secret: a vast treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo. The smugglers land there because it is deserted, with neither soldiers nor revenue officers. Told that there are no grottos on the island, Dantès breaks into a cold sweat, but he finds the cave: a coffer in three compartments holds gold coin, bars of gold and handfuls of gems, with a thousand ingots of gold among them. He later buys the island and the title of count from the Tuscan government.

Location precision: The treasure cave is Dumas's invention; the pin marks the island of Montecristo as a whole.

Visitor guidance: The island is a state nature reserve: a visit needs a permit from the Forestry Corps in Follonica, and approval takes about three years on average.

In Rome the Count arranges for Albert to be captured by the bandit Luigi Vampa, his ally, and the bandits bring him to the catacombs of St. Sebastian. Franz follows the Count down into a mortuary chamber: "Would you like to see a camp of bandits in repose?" Vampa wakes the sleeping Albert only to tell him he is free. Later the same cell holds Danglars, kidnapped as he leaves Rome and forced to pay exorbitant prices for food and water, until the Count forgives him and lets him go with 50,000 francs.

Visitor guidance: The catacombs lie along Via Appia Antica in the Ardeatino quarter and are one of the very few Christian burial places that has always been accessible.

The Count leaks to the newspapers Fernand's betrayal of Ali Pasha, and the usually calm House of Peers falls into great agitation. Haydée, the exiled daughter of Ali Pasha of Janina, testifies as an eyewitness: "You are Fernand Mondego, the French officer who led the troops of my noble father!" Asked whether the Count of Morcerf is convicted of felony, treason and conduct unbecoming a member of the House, the committee of inquiry answers yes with a unanimous voice. The Chamber of Peers, France's upper house from 1814 to 1848, met in the Luxembourg Palace.

Location precision: The novel names only the House of Peers; the pin marks the Luxembourg Palace, where the Chamber of Peers met.

Visitor guidance: The palace is now the seat of the Senate; the 25-hectare Luxembourg Garden lies on its south side.

Valentine de Villefort's funeral procession goes to Père-Lachaise, because her father considers it the only cemetery worthy of a Parisian family. He has bought a vault there, quickly filled by members of his family; its front names the families of Saint-Méran and Villefort. The death itself is not real. The Count, protecting her from a poisoner, has faked it, and she later says he saved her life by enabling her to simulate death. Père-Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris, at 44 hectares.

Location precision: The Villefort family vault is Dumas's invention; the pin marks the cemetery as a whole.

Visitor guidance: The Métro station Philippe Auguste on Line 2 is next to the main entrance.

At the Palais the Benedetto affair becomes a bombshell. Asked for his name, the accused answers that his father is "named M. de Villefort, and I am ready to prove it": a baby wrapped in a napkin marked with an H and an N, carried into a garden and buried alive. Villefort, the prosecutor in the case, admits his guilt and rushes home, too late: his wife is dead and has poisoned her son as well. The Count reveals himself, "the spectre of a wretch you buried" in the Château d'If, and Villefort loses his reason.

Location precision: The novel says only 'the Palais'; the pin marks the Palais de la Cité, Paris's seat of justice, as a whole.

Visitor guidance: The Palais still houses courts; the Conciergerie and the Sainte-Chapelle can be visited via separate entrances.

One month later, on the island of Monte Cristo, the Count reunites Valentine with Maximilien. Morrel is counting the hours to the fifth of October, the end of the waiting period the Count named, and enters the grotto with him. Valentine and Morrel then find a letter: what lies there are marriage gifts bestowed by Edmond Dantès upon the son of his old master, Morrel. On the horizon they perceive a large white sail; the Count is leaving for the East with Haydée. His parting message: all human wisdom is summed up in two words, wait and hope.

Location precision: The grotto of the last scenes is Dumas's invention; the pin marks the island of Montecristo as a whole.

Visitor guidance: The island is a state nature reserve: a visit needs a permit from the Forestry Corps in Follonica, and approval takes about three years on average.