Classic film location tours: Roman Holiday to Gladiator

Some films outlive the decade they were made in, and so do the places they were shot. Audrey Hepburn put her hand in the Bocca della Verità in Roman Holiday in 1953, and people still queue at Santa Maria in Cosmedin to do the same. Anita Ekberg waded into the Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita in 1960; you cannot do that today, but you can stand at the rail in the evening, when the water is lit and the crowd thins. In Salzburg the gazebo from The Sound of Music now stands in the park of Hellbrunn Palace, and the Mirabell Gardens still have the steps the children sang down in 1965.

The classics run further than Rome and Salzburg. In Malta, Ridley Scott built his Colosseum for Gladiator (2000) at Fort Ricasoli, across the Grand Harbour from Valletta, and the old capital of Mdina has played a dozen cities since. At Petra in Jordan, the rose-colored front of the Treasury is the temple of the Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). And in Los Angeles, where most of these stories began, Griffith Observatory still looks over the city the way it did in Rebel Without a Cause in 1955.

These are city and landscape trips more than fan trips. You do not need to have seen every film, and our tour leaders are good at setting up a scene in two minutes before you get out of the van. Days mix three or four filming locations with a museum, a long lunch and some free time. Walking is easy to moderate: a few miles a day, some steps and cobbles, little that needs real fitness.

We stick to places the public can visit: streets, squares, parks, museums, palaces and cafes. Where a famous scene was shot in a private house or apartment, we tell you about it from the street and leave the people inside in peace. Expect a few honest surprises too. Many of the most famous shots were filmed on stages, and the leaders will tell you which ones.