Fiction tourism

Fiction tourism aims at locations famous from literature, motion pictures, television series, video games, comic books and other media. Among featured destinations are film sets (hence the term setjetting), other shooting locations, TV or motion picture studios, theme parks, and museums.

Some of these have guided tours and other organized hospitality for fiction tourists.

Specific works, franchises and genres
"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."

- Jessamyn West

While series such as Breaking Bad and The Wire mostly take place within one city, others are spread out across a country, or even several continents.

Multiple media

 * Astrid Lindgren tourism (primarily Sweden)
 * Disney tourism.
 * Winnie the Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood in literary tourism is Ashdown Forest's Five Hundred Acre Wood near Hartfield, UK.


 * Assassin's Creed Tour – a video game that takes place in multiple countries in different eras
 * Robert Langdon tourism – the locations featured in Dan Brown's controversial mysteries
 * Ghost of Tsushima Tour – A PlayStation game set during the Mongolian invasions of the island of Tsushima in Japan
 * Greek and Roman mythology includes the Trojan War described in Homer's Iliad supposedly took place in ancient Troy, in what is now Turkey. Its ruins were discovered in the 19th century and have been partly excavated.
 * Harry Potter tourism (primarily United Kingdom) - locations where the film series was filmed.
 * Monty Python tourism
 * Nordic Noir, including franchises such as Pusher, The Killing, Beck, and Wallander
 * Millennium Tour, the Lisbeth Salander stories
 * Horror fiction
 * Anime and Manga in Japan
 * Bollywood tourism
 * Dracula set in Transylvania, Romania and Whitby, Yorkshire, England.
 * Universal Studios (studio tours & theme parks in Universal City, California and Orlando, Florida)

Books

 * Exodus of Moses, according to the Bible's Old Testament
 * Trojan War, a legendary war of the 12th century BC, retold in the Iliad and Odyssey and the Aeneid
 * One Thousand and One Nights
 * Robin Hood, a noble thief in English folklore set in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire
 * Jane Austen tourism
 * Frankenstein set in Germany and Geneva, Switzerland.
 * Travels of Hans Christian Andersen, author of The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling and other fairy tales
 * Around the World in Eighty Days; recreating Jules Verne's 19th-century adventure novel
 * Kipling's Kim, through much of northern India and parts of Pakistan during the British Raj
 * The Flashman Papers, comic novels about a cowardly and lecherous British officer in Victoria's time
 * Nils Holgersson's Journey Across Sweden
 * Emigrants tour, following Vilhelm Moberg's book series about emigrants from Sweden to the United States.
 * Twilight, is a series of four vampire-themed fantasy romance novels by American author Stephenie Meyer, as well as three companion novels. The story in the novel was set primarily in the small town of Forks, Washington with real places in and around the town identified from the novel. Twilight the movie (2008), based on the novel, was filmed primarily in Portland, Oregon while its continual saga, Twilight: New Moon (2009) was filmed mainly in Vancouver, British Columbia, though the Volterra scenes were actually filmed in Montepulciano, Italy. Some of the scenes from both films also took place in other locations in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

Films

 * Back to the Future tourism A 1985-1990 trilogy film, set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California, which was filmed in several real places in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area (Hill Valley in 1955, 1985 & 2015) and Sonora CA (Hill Valley in 1885).
 * Bandit Run, the race from Smokey and the Bandit
 * Cars A 2006 animated film by Pixar, set in the fictional village of Radiator Springs, which is a composite of several real places along Route 66 and a couple of other places not on that highway, all in the United States of America.
 * DC Extended Universe tourism
 * Easy Rider, a 1969 road movie, featuring a motorcycle ride from Los Angeles to New Orleans.
 * Fast & Furious tourism
 * Forrest Gump tour showcases the great events of the postwar United States. While the story is told to be set in Alabama, most of the filming took place in Beaufort, South Carolina and in the surrounding cities/town of South Carolina and nearby Savannah GA. Other places used to support the filming and the storyline are in Los Angeles, CA and Washington, DC.
 * James Bond tourism
 * In July — the itinerary of the protagonists of a 2000 German road movie across Europe
 * Indiana Jones tourism
 * Ingmar Bergman tourism
 * Kill Bill tourism
 * The Lord of the Rings tourism (primarily New Zealand) - locations where the film series was filmed.
 * Marvel Cinematic Universe tourism
 * Mission Impossible tourism
 * Matrix  tourism, largely filmed in Sydney
 * Shawshank Redemption A 1994 film based on Steven King's novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (1982) and inspired by Clint Eastwood's Escape from Alcatraz (1979), set in a fictional "Shawshank Prison" in Maine, but actually filmed in Mansfield, Ohio and in the nearby towns of Ashland and Upper Sandusky, Ohio.
 * The Sound of Music in Salzburg, Austria
 * Star Wars tourism
 * Tenet tour in Tallinn and other places
 * Terminator tourism - a time-travel franchise mostly associated with Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg character. Much of the plots are filmed in and around the Los Angeles area.
 * Missing in Action - All three Chuck Norris MiA films were shot in the Philippines, mainly on Mount Maculot which tourists often climb for the fine view

TV shows

 * Game of Thrones tourism (primarily Northern Ireland, but also Croatia, Iceland, Malta, Morocco and Spain)
 * Seinfeld (primarily New York, but also in Los Angeles)
 * Breaking Bad
 * X-Files tourism
 * The Wire
 * Friends (primarily New York, but also in Los Angeles)
 * Turkish TV series tourism — the featured locations in the Turkish drama series with the largest international following
 * I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970) was set in Cocoa Beach, Florida but was filmed in Southern California.

Board games
Carcassonne is a French city that was fought over in the 13th century during the Crusade against the Cathars; much of the medieval city has been preserved and today it is a popular tourist destination. There is a board game called Carcassonne; it emphasizes development of the countryside, not battles. Some visitors bring a copy to play in the location, perhaps in the shadow of the city wall.

Our articles on Board games, Chess, Go, Shogi (Japanese chess), Xiangqi (Chinese chess) and Monopoly have links to sites associated with those games. The musical Chess takes place in Merano in Italy; an earlier version in Bangkok in Thailand as well.

Namibia
The Namibian desert is the shooting location of the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road

Asia

 * Hong Kong: The city's narrow streets and neon lights influenced various cyberpunk-topic fictions, most notably the Ghost in the Shell series.
 * Mumbai, India: The home of Bollywood.
 * Yongin, Miryang and other locations around South Korea are visited by domestic and international fans of K-drama shot there.
 * Kaiping, in southern China, is known for its UNESCO-listed "castles", strange houses built by overseas Chinese. It was the setting for the hit Chinese movie Let the Bullets Fly.
 * Many films about the Vietnam War have been shot in the Philippines, mostly in Luzon. Apocalypse Now was mostly filmed in Zambales, and Chuck Norris' Missing in Action movies were mostly filmed near Cuenca, Batangas.
 * Kyoto is home to many of Japan's film studios, and Toei's outdoor set where Samurai movies are filmed may be visited.
 * Kyoto is home to many of Japan's film studios, and Toei's outdoor set where Samurai movies are filmed may be visited.

Nordic countries




Central Europe

 * Görlitz is one of the few cities in Central Europe with an old town that looks convincingly "pre World War II" and as such many movies set in that era have been made here since the 1990s.
 * Munich is home to the Bavaria Film Studios where both German and international films have been shot. Also, probably half of the many German crime drama series take place in Munich.
 * Babelsberg, a suburb of Berlin and administratively part of Potsdam also has film studios where, among others, one of the longest running German soap operas ("Gute Zeiten schlechte Zeiten" aka GZSZ) is shot.
 * The scenery of Switzerland has been used in many Indian movies of the past 50 years, with the mountains, forests and lakes serving as the background for many songs, scenes and even entire films. For example, Dilwale Dilwale Le Jaayenge (DDLJ), the famous film commonly cited as inspiring Switzerland as the premier destination for Indian movie shoots, had scenes shot in Gstaad and Saanen, with other movies quickly following suit. The soaring peaks and small towns on the Bernese Highlands make the region particularly popular for filmmakers and tourists alike.
 * The scenery of Switzerland has been used in many Indian movies of the past 50 years, with the mountains, forests and lakes serving as the background for many songs, scenes and even entire films. For example, Dilwale Dilwale Le Jaayenge (DDLJ), the famous film commonly cited as inspiring Switzerland as the premier destination for Indian movie shoots, had scenes shot in Gstaad and Saanen, with other movies quickly following suit. The soaring peaks and small towns on the Bernese Highlands make the region particularly popular for filmmakers and tourists alike.
 * The scenery of Switzerland has been used in many Indian movies of the past 50 years, with the mountains, forests and lakes serving as the background for many songs, scenes and even entire films. For example, Dilwale Dilwale Le Jaayenge (DDLJ), the famous film commonly cited as inspiring Switzerland as the premier destination for Indian movie shoots, had scenes shot in Gstaad and Saanen, with other movies quickly following suit. The soaring peaks and small towns on the Bernese Highlands make the region particularly popular for filmmakers and tourists alike.

Britain and Ireland

 * London: See Literary London for complete coverage.
 * While the James Bond series have been filmed all around the world, all of them also feature London — at the very least the MI6 headquarters. Also, countless other British and non-British movies and tv-series take place and have been filmed in London.
 * Braveheart was recorded in Scotland (Glencoe, Stirling, Loch Leven and Glen Nevis) as well as Ireland.
 * Game of Thrones was shot mainly around Belfast.
 * The BBC equivalent of that one rock in Southern California (see below) is Harriet Hole in Dinorwic Slate Quarry in Wales, where according to one probably apocryphal account two series were shot at the same time without either production knowing of the other, thus the two got in the way of each other.
 * Stratford-upon-Avon has five sites closely associated with Shakespeare. A combi-ticket (called "The Full Story") is best value and they can all be seen in the course of an afternoon. Three are central: Shakespeare's birthplace on Henley Street is the obvious starting point. In later life he bought a house at New Place - it's long been demolished, but you visit to see the garden there, and the adjoining Nash's House where his grand-daughter Elizabeth lived. His daughter Susanna married Dr John Hall, and Hall's Croft was their house. A mile west in the hamlet of Shottery is Anne Hathaway's Cottage, where she grew up before marrying Shakespeare. Three miles west in Wilmcote is Mary Arden's Farm, childhood home of Shakespeare's mother. His plays are regularly performed at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in the centre of Stratford.

France

 * Paris, one of the world's most prominent cities, has been the backdrop of many films, both French and international. It was also in Paris the world's first public movie screening took place in 1895.

Balkans

 * What does a fictional Apache chief that was dreamed up by someone from Radebeul, Saxony have to do with Croatia? Well, when the works of Karl May about Old Shatterhand, Winnetou and all the others were put to film by German companies, they found that (then) Yugoslavia was much cheaper than the actual Llano Estancado and people in their target audience would neither notice or care, so the site of Winnetou's death is indeed to be found in Croatia, Trogir looks a lot like the Santa Fe of the third movie and when going through Plitvice Lakes National Park you might find the heroes of your youth come back to life. To add yet another wrinkle, the very successful early 21st century parody on the Karl May movies "Der Schuh des Manitu" ("The shoe of Manitou") was shot in neither the Balkans nor North America but instead in Spain.

Australia

 * Sydney is also home to Fox Studios Australia, the largest film production facility in Australia.
 * Sydney is also home to Fox Studios Australia, the largest film production facility in Australia.
 * Sydney is also home to Fox Studios Australia, the largest film production facility in Australia.

New Zealand

 * New Zealand: Famous for the Lord of the Rings franchise.
 * Matamata – the set of Hobbiton is still here and can be visited
 * Tongariro National Park – the location of some scenes, such as Mordor
 * Queenstown – another location, and has Lord of the Rings tours
 * Wellington – home to Weta Studios, the film studio that made the films, as well many of the filming locations. Many companies conduct Lord of the Rings tours to the various filming locations.

Mexico

 * The seaside town of Acapulco is where some episodes of the Mexican TV series El Chavo del Ocho and El Chapulín Colorado were recorded in the 1970s.
 * Puerto Vallarta is famed for the filming of the Night of the Iguana in 1963 and later also the filming locations of Herbie goes Bananas (1980); Predator (1987) among other movies.

United States
The fiction of the Old West is set all across the western United States - shooting locations of Western movies often included places far away from the US, for monetary or political reasons.


 * Colorado Springs, Colorado &mdash; The Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station was the location of the Terran stargate! The stargate is located underneath the former North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) headquarters.
 * Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming &mdash; Made famous in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a site of first contact, transmitted psychically to abduction victims.

California
"In California, they don't throw their garbage away - they make it into TV shows. – Woody Allen" California in general has been (and continues to be) used for many films given that it is the center of the American mainstream film industry and offers a wide variety of different landscapes that can be used to represent different environments; for example, one rock in Southern California has reportedly been used as a backdrop in dozens of incredibly varied movies.
 * Los Angeles is quite arguably the greatest place in the world for cinema tourism, being the home to Hollywood and the backdrop for countless movies; so many that it would be absurd to try and list even just the most famous ones here. Besides the touristy district of Hollywood, with its star-lined Walk of Fame, numerous old theaters and iconic signs, most of the active film and television studios are located in adjacent communities, such as Burbank, the home of Warner Brothers, Disney, and NBC-Universal, Century City, headquarters of 20th Century Fox, Culver City with its historic film studios, and Fairfax, home to CBS' main television studio. Many of these studios offer tours and with careful planning it is possible to obtain tickets to a taping of a television show. The Los Angeles area is also home to theme parks such as Universal Studios and Disneyland, both large-scale celebrations of their company's respective films. Throughout the Greater Los Angeles area a number of private homes, (non-film) businesses, schools, college campuses, malls, hospitals and parks have been used as settings or backdrops for various movies and television programs while what went on inside may have been filmed inside these buildings, back at the studio or at another location. An example is Torrance High School which served as the fictional "West Beverly High School" for the TV Series Beverly Hills 90210 and from 2008 to 2013 as "Ulysses S. Grant High School" in The Secret Life of the American Teenager among other movies such as The Wild Life, Not Another Teen Movie, Whatever It Takes, Cursed, Wild Things 3, and Bruce Almighty. A lot of these settings including this high school and many private homes used in movie and TV shoots are at most viewable from the street and cannot be visited by the public.
 * The Bradbury Building in downtown LA is an iconic piece of Victorian architecture that's been used in many films, including Blade Runner and The Artist.
 * and near  in Malibu have been the filming locations for numerous movies and TV programs such as Planet of the Apes, I Dream of Jeannie, D-Day 6th of June (1956); D-Day Battle of Omaha Beach (2019); Iron Man Parts 1-3, Fast & Furious, Lucifer, Star Trek Enterprise-Earth Beach, Knight and Day,, etc. The nearby  served as the filming location (in place of Korea) for M*A*S*H TV series.
 * and near  in Malibu have been the filming locations for numerous movies and TV programs such as Planet of the Apes, I Dream of Jeannie, D-Day 6th of June (1956); D-Day Battle of Omaha Beach (2019); Iron Man Parts 1-3, Fast & Furious, Lucifer, Star Trek Enterprise-Earth Beach, Knight and Day,, etc. The nearby  served as the filming location (in place of Korea) for M*A*S*H TV series.
 * and near  in Malibu have been the filming locations for numerous movies and TV programs such as Planet of the Apes, I Dream of Jeannie, D-Day 6th of June (1956); D-Day Battle of Omaha Beach (2019); Iron Man Parts 1-3, Fast & Furious, Lucifer, Star Trek Enterprise-Earth Beach, Knight and Day,, etc. The nearby  served as the filming location (in place of Korea) for M*A*S*H TV series.


 * Despite the name, the annual San Diego Comic-Con has become a major event in the cinema world. Taking place in San Diego every July, this is one of the world's biggest fan conventions and tickets are expensive and hard to get, but if you're lucky enough to get inside you can expect plenty of big-name film and television stars and producers, in addition to representatives of major toy manufacturers and the video game and comic industries, showing up to offer sneak peeks at major upcoming releases.
 * San Francisco has been the backdrop for numerous famous films, including Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, the Dirty Harry series, and the action movie The Rock.

Midwest

 * Chicago — the country's third largest city (and historically its "second city") is also featured in several movies, some of them being The Blues Brothers, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, The Fugitive, Batman Begins, Breakfast Club, and Chicago.
 * Union Station - among other films, the famous staircase shootout with the imperiled baby carriage in The Untouchables was filmed here.

East Coast

 * New York City has been the backdrop for countless motion pictures and television series not to mention all the video games set here; again, so many that it would be fruitless to try and list them all here. In contrast to L.A., New York is more reputed for its indie film scene, with numerous excellent theaters catering to that clientele and oftentimes hosting discussions with the makers of some fine, lesser-known films. Additionally, most of America's major media and television networks are headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, with most of the popular late night and morning talk shows taped here, usually with tickets available to the public.
 * Cortlandt Alley in Chinatown. Contrary to popular portrayal in film, New York only has a handful of dark, dingy alleys, and most of them are off-limits to filming. So if a scene takes place in an alley in a film or TV show filmed in New York, it was almost certainly filmed here.
 * Washington, D.C.: Any film involving the American political leadership in any form or role will have Washington as a backdrop — frequent appearances are made by the White House, U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon, across the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia. Many episodes of the CBS series NCIS are set in Washington, where NCIS is based at the Washington Naval Yards.
 * Washington, D.C.: Any film involving the American political leadership in any form or role will have Washington as a backdrop — frequent appearances are made by the White House, U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon, across the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia. Many episodes of the CBS series NCIS are set in Washington, where NCIS is based at the Washington Naval Yards.


 * Seneca Falls is widely believed to be the original Baxter Falls in the holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life.


 * Manchester-by-the-Sea for the eponymous 2017 film



Southwest

 * Route 66 has been the setting for many films, such as The Grapes of Wrath. Pixar's Cars contains cartoon versions of some real places on the route and parodies a Monument Valley side trip as "Ornament Valley".
 * Route 66 has been the setting for many films, such as The Grapes of Wrath. Pixar's Cars contains cartoon versions of some real places on the route and parodies a Monument Valley side trip as "Ornament Valley".

Northwest




Canada




Brazil
Many Brazilian action films have taken place in favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro, such as City of God, the two Elite Squad movies and Last Stop 174. One of those favelas where some of this filmes were shot is Tavares Bastos, located at Catete neighborhood, in South Zone of Rio de Janeiro. In addition to these films, in this favela was recorded the music video Beautiful by Snoop Dog and Pharrell.

Fan conventions and trade shows
Fan groups often hold conventions for like-minded people to gather and share their love for the specific genres. Similarly, industry groups often hold their own events to announce the development of new products to the press. While hundreds of such events exist, the ones listed here are particularly notable for showcasing works that are at the pinnacle of their respective genres.

Comic books

 * San Diego Comic-Con in San Diego, United States
 * Comiket in Tokyo, Japan
 * Comic-Con Experience (CCXP) in São Paulo, Brazil

Anime and manga

 * Animextreme in Porto Alegre, Brazil
 * Anime Friends in São Paulo, Brazil
 * Comic Fiesta in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Fantasy and science fiction

 * Dragon Con in Atlanta, United States

Video games

 * BlizzCon in Anaheim, United States
 * Tokyo Game Show in Chiba, Japan
 * Gamescom in Cologne, Germany
 * Brasil Game Show, in São Paulo, Brazil

Backlots
Film studios had traditionally built massive backlots simulating localities or time periods. However, with the rise of commercial air travel, studios have increasingly turned on on-location filming instead, and advances in computer technology have led to an increasing number of productions being shot indoors against a green screen, with the background later added using computer-generated imagery (CGI), thus obviating the need for backlots and physical sets. These, coupled with the boom in real estate prices, means that backlots are increasingly few and far between, with most of the Hollywood studios such as MGM and RKO having sold off their backlots to property developers in the 1970s, who have proceeded to demolish the film sets and replace them with suburban housing. Nevertheless, a few of the Hollywood studios have retained parts of their backlots and converted them into tourist attractions that you can visit. Backlots also continue to be used extensively in East Asia for the filming of period dramas.



Respect
Many destinations (especially film and literature settings, and current and former celebrity homes) are private property. Some are off limits to the public. Even if they can be legally approached, trespassing or excessive photography might disturb residents.

In most countries, works of fiction become public domain 70 years after the author's death, which means that most modern works are proprietary. Businesses (including guided tours and merchandisers) might need a license to make profit from those franchises. The United States is for now the main exception. While newer works have the "life plus 70" term—or for "works for hire", which covers most films, 95 years from publication—those first published before 1978 are protected for 95 years from first publication (with the official public domain date being January 1 of the 96th year). For example, the famed American novel The Great Gatsby (by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and published in 1925) entered the public domain in most countries in 2011 (Fitzgerald died in 1940), but did not enter the US public domain until 2021.