The Godfather: From Staten Island to Sicily

The saga opens at Connie Corleone's wedding to Carlo Rizzi, where Michael introduces his girlfriend Kay Adams to the family and insists he wants no part of its business. Coppola filmed the wedding at a real house, 110 Longfellow Avenue on Staten Island, using almost 750 locals as extras. Vito holds court, granting favours in the Sicilian wedding-day tradition, while Michael watches from the edge — the last time he stands outside the family.

The Corleone olive-oil business fronts its New York operation from this block, filmed on Mott Street — then an unchanged stretch between Little Italy and Chinatown. The Genco premises stood at the Mietz Building, 128 Mott Street, and it is outside this shop that Vito is gunned down by two assailants. Mott Street north of Canal was historically part of Little Italy, the neighbourhood the fictional Corleone family calls home.

Visitor guidance: The Mietz Building stands at 128 Mott Street; see it from the public sidewalk.

After shooting Sollozzo and McCluskey, Michael flees to take refuge in his family's native Sicily until the heat dies down. The village he walks into as Corleone is really Forza d'Agrò, one of the two Sicilian towns featured in the film, which together with Savoca formed the location for the scenes set in Corleone. Forza is a small medieval community dominated by the ruins of a sixteenth-century castle, and its streets play the village of Corleone.

Location precision: Forza d'Agrò plays the fictional village of Corleone; the pin marks the village rather than a single doorway.

Visitor guidance: The village is small and walkable; the castle ruins overlook it from the higher peak.

Hiding in Sicily, Michael falls for Apollonia Vitelli and comes here with his bodyguards to ask her father's permission to meet her. Bar Vitelli in Savoca is still a functioning establishment, shown in the film as the place where Michael asks Apollonia's father to meet his daughter. Inside you can still see the small, wood-panelled bar of that scene. The stop captures the film's gentlest stretch: Michael the exile, courting Apollonia under guard, before tragedy strikes.

Visitor guidance: Bar Vitelli is a working bar in Savoca; check opening hours before travelling.

Michael falls in love with Apollonia Vitelli and marries her in the village church: the Chiesa di Santa Lucia in Savoca, the church at which he marries her. Savoca itself, together with Forza d'Agrò, was the location for the scenes set in Corleone.

Visitor guidance: The church is an active place of worship; visit outside service times.

The Sicilian idyll ends in murder. A hit meant for Michael instead kills Apollonia in a car bombing outside the villa where he is staying: the eighteenth-century Castello degli Schiavi, the Castle of Slaves, near Fiumefreddo, about six miles south of Taormina. Michael survives and returns to America, hardened, to take over the family business and marry Kay. The villa cannot be toured, so this stop is for the story.

The climax intercuts the sacred and the profane: Michael attends his nephew's baptism to be anointed godfather while his hitmen simultaneously assassinate Greene and the heads of the other New York families. The christening church stands at 264 Mulberry Street, between East Prince and Houston Streets in Little Italy — New York's Old St Patrick's Cathedral, whose primary entrance is on Mott Street. Little Italy is the locale of the fictional Corleone family, and this is where Michael finally becomes Don Corleone.

Visitor guidance: The primary entrance is on Mott Street; the parish is active, so visit outside Mass times.