Tristan and Iseult: From Cornwall to Brittany

Before the lovers meet, Tristan has a kingdom: Lyonesse, ruled by his father Meliodas. He never inherits it. While he is away at his uncle King Mark's court in Cornwall, the land is said to sink beneath the sea, with 140 churches and several towns. Legend puts the drowned country between Land's End and the Isles of Scilly, and fishermen are said to hear its church bells. The pin marks the Seven Stones reef, about 15 miles west of Land's End. The medieval texts mention no flood; the sinking is a later story.

Location precision: A legendary land with no confirmed site; the pin marks the Seven Stones reef, the reputed site of its capital.

Iseult is an Irish princess, the daughter of King Anguish and Queen Iseult the Elder. She first heals Tristan after his duel with her uncle Morholt, and later he comes back to win her hand for King Mark. Dublin keeps her name in Chapelizod, from the Irish Séipéal Iosóid, "Iseult's chapel". A chapel consecrated in her honour gave the village its name, and a record of 1228 calls the place capella Isolde. It sits in the wooded Liffey valley beside Phoenix Park.

Location precision: Only the place name links the village to Iseult; the stories give no exact site in Ireland.

Visitor guidance: A village on the River Liffey, next to Phoenix Park.

Mark rules Cornwall, and Iseult arrives at his court with a secret: on the voyage from Ireland, she and Tristan drank a love potion. Tradition places Mark's seat at Castle Dore, an Iron Age hill fort near Golant. The link comes from the nearby Tristan Stone, not from the poems. Excavations in the 1930s found postholes from huts of at least two phases, though later study dated the occupation to the Iron Age alone, so the legend rests on the stone rather than on any royal hall.

Location precision: A tradition tied to a nearby inscribed stone; no medieval text names Castle Dore. The pin marks the hill fort.

A 6th-century granite pillar, 2.13 m tall, carries a Latin inscription: Drustanus lies here, son of Cunomorus. A plaque beside it asserts that Drustanus is Tristan and Cunomorus is King Mark, though scholars debate that. Around 1540 John Leland recorded a third line that has since vanished. Until the 1980s the stone stood in a field near the turn down to Polkerris harbour. It now stands by the road to Fowey, set in a modern concrete base, and it is the best-known real object tied to the legend.

Location precision: The stone was moved in the 1980s; the pin marks Polkerris, near its original spot, not where it stands today.

Visitor guidance: Beside the road leading to Fowey.

In Béroul's version Mark condemns his nephew to hang and Iseult to burn. Tristan escapes on the way to the gallows with a leap from a chapel and rescues her. Later writers wanted a cliff-top stage for all this, and found one at Tintagel. Swinburne's Tristram of Lyonesse sets some events there, and Thomas Hardy's one-act play The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall at Tintagel in Lyonnesse followed in 1923. The castle itself was linked to Arthur by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Location precision: A literary placement by modern authors; the medieval poems do not name Tintagel for these scenes.

Exiled from Iseult, Tristan crosses to Brittany and marries another woman: Iseult of the White Hands, daughter of King Hoel, chosen for her name and beauty. He still thinks of Iseult the Blonde and has a room built with statues evoking her. Hoel's town Karahès has been identified with Carhaix. In Béroul, King Marc swears by Saint Tresmor of Caharès, and Saint Trémeur is Carhaix's main saint. The Prose Tristan has Tristan return to Karahèse in Brittany with King Hoel.

Location precision: The medieval Karahès is identified with Carhaix, but the poems never place it for certain. The pin marks the town centre.

In Thomas's version Tristan, dying of a poisoned lance, waits for Iseult's ship, white sails if she comes. His jealous wife lies about the colour, and he dies of grief; Iseult dies over his body. Near Douarnenez a small island, 450 m by 250 m, carries his name. It was St Tutuarn Island, home to a priory, until the 14th century, when it became known as Tristan after the Breton legend. A rebel-bandit, Guy Éder de la Fontenelle, seized it in 1595.

Visitor guidance: Reached on foot at low tide during spring tides, for a couple of hours at a time; check the tide timetable posted on the mainland opposite.