The Talented Mr. Ripley: Ischia to Venice

Tom arrives in the fictional village of Mongibello with a job: Herbert Greenleaf pays him $1,000 to travel to Italy and bring his son Dickie home. The film used villages on Ischia and Procida to play Mongibello, and the bustling square where Tom gets off the bus is Ischia Ponte. There he befriends Dickie and his girlfriend Marge, claiming to be a former Princeton classmate. The Aragonese Castle stands on a volcanic rocky islet linked to Ischia by a causeway, and is today the island's most visited monument.

Location precision: The sources name the square at Ischia Ponte but give no exact spot; the pin marks the nearby Aragonese Castle.

Visitor guidance: The Aragonese Castle is the island's most visited monument, reached by a causeway.

In Corricella on Procida, Dickie rides his scooter and furtively meets his secret girlfriend Silvana on the steep Via San Rocco, while the calculating Tom watches from further down the street. It looks like paradise, but the story turns here: Dickie impregnates and then spurns Silvana, a local woman, who drowns herself. Procida has served as a film set for more than 30 films, The Talented Mr. Ripley among them.

Dickie's villa is Palazzo Malcovati, on Ischia Ponte's main street, Via Luigi Mazzella. You can see its terrace, where Tom reveals his musical tastes, at the end of Largo Stradone. Dickie's wealthy friend Freddie Miles distrusts Tom and treats him with contempt. The mood sours further at the Festival of the Madonna, held on the waterfront of Piazza Malcovati: as the statue of the Virgin rises from the waves, the sea also gives up the body of Silvana.

Location precision: The sources name the street, not a building footprint; the pin marks Via Luigi Mazzella.

Dickie convinces Tom to take a final trip to San Remo, but the film's San Remo is Anzio, a resort town near Rome; the real one is up at the French border. The jazz festival, where it becomes clear that the good life is coming to an end, is staged on Anzio's seafront. Then, aboard a small boat, Tom ends up killing Dickie with an oar. Locals keep mistaking him for Dickie, so Tom assumes his identity.

Location precision: The sources name the Anzio seafront but no exact spot; the pin marks the port.

Visitor guidance: Anzio is a fishing port and a departure point for ferries and hydroplanes to the Pontine Islands.

In the story Tom is in Rome, living as Dickie. He runs into Meredith, who still knows him as Dickie, and goes with her family to the opera, where he unexpectedly runs into Marge and her friend Peter Smith-Kingsley. The ruse is threatened. The film's "Roman" opera house is really the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the oldest continuously active venue for opera in the world, which opened in 1737.

Visitor guidance: A working opera house; the season runs from late November to July.

Tom's cover begins to crack in Rome. The café where Freddie turns up is on Piazza Navona, and Freddie then shows up at Tom's apartment looking for Dickie. When the landlady addresses Tom as Dickie, Freddie realizes the fraud, and Tom fatally bludgeons him with a sculpted bust. The piazza is built on the site of the Stadium of Domitian; Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, from 1651, stands in its centre.

Under his real name, Tom travels to Venice, where he again meets Peter. His apartment on screen is an amalgam of two palazzos, one of them Ca' Sagredo, a 14th-century Byzantine-Gothic palace at the corner of Strada Nuova and Campo Santa Sofia. It was empty and abandoned at the time of filming, and has since been restored as a five-star hotel.

Location precision: The film's apartment blends two palazzos; the pin marks Ca' Sagredo, one of them.

Visitor guidance: Ca' Sagredo is now a hotel on Campo Santa Sofia.

Marge is certain that Tom is culpable, and in Venice she finally voices her suspicions about Dickie's disappearance at Caffè Florian, a coffee house in the Procuratie Nuove of Piazza San Marco. Later Herbert Greenleaf dismisses Marge's suspicions. The Florian was established in 1720 and is the oldest coffee house in continuous operation in Italy, so you can order a coffee in the same place.