Mythology Map
Almost every story has real coordinates: Mount Olympus truly stands, and Troy was archaeologically confirmed in 1871. Tap a marker for the story, tap the legend to filter storylines.
☜ Tap a marker and its story appears here.
Gods & Sacred Sites
The Trojan War
The Return of Odysseus
The Labors of Heracles
The Voyage of the Argo
Cities of the Heroes
Roman Legend
Places that can’t be mapped: the underworld, Calypso’s island of Ogygia, the garden of the golden apples, the Hyperborean paradise — myth deliberately set them "beyond the known world." Coastline data from Natural Earth; mythic sites use standard classical identifications, a few (such as the Cyclops’s home) by traditional attribution.
Places on this map
Mount Olympus
The highest peak in Greece (2,917 m) and home of the twelve Olympian gods — Zeus, Hera, Athena and the rest — who feast, quarrel, and look down on the mortal world from its cloud-wreathed summit. It is entirely real, and you can hike to the top today.
Delphi
The oracle of Apollo, the "navel of the world" to the ancient Greeks (the Omphalos stone still survives in the museum). Here Oedipus heard the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, and "know thyself" was carved over the temple door.
Delos
Hunted by Hera, Leto could find nowhere to give birth; the floating island of Delos took her in, and Apollo and Artemis were born here, after which Zeus fixed the island fast in the sea. The whole island is now an open-air archaeological site.
Dodona
The oldest oracle in Greece — its priests read the divine will not from entrails or smoke but from the rustling leaves of Zeus’s sacred oak. The prow-timber of the Argo was cut from this very talking oak.
Connected figures: Zeus
Paphos
When the flesh of Uranus fell into the sea it stirred up foam, and Aphrodite was born from the waves, riding a shell ashore at Paphos on Cyprus — the very scene of Botticelli’s "Birth of Venus."
Troy
The ten-year siege, the wrath of Achilles, the death of Hector, the wooden horse — the stage of the whole Iliad. Long taken for pure fiction, until Schliemann excavated nine superimposed ancient cities at Hisarlik in Turkey in 1871.
Connected figures: Achilles · Hector · Paris · Helen · Cassandra
Sparta
The royal city of Menelaus and Helen, "the most beautiful woman in the world." The Trojan prince Paris came to visit and carried Helen off — and one face launched a thousand ships.
Mycenae
The "city of gold" of the supreme commander Agamemnon. On the night of his triumphant return, Queen Clytemnestra killed him in his bath, setting off Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy. The Lion Gate and the shaft graves still stand.
Connected figures: Agamemnon · Clytemnestra · Cassandra
Ithaca
The homeland of Odysseus and the destination of the whole Odyssey. After ten years of wandering he came home disguised as a beggar and, with the bow only he could string, shot an arrow through twelve axe-heads and cleared out a hall full of suitors. Penelope wove a shroud by day and unraveled it by night, holding out twenty years.
Strait of Messina
On one side of the strait the six-headed monster Scylla, on the other the ship-swallowing whirlpool Charybdis. Odysseus chose to hug Scylla’s side, sacrificing six crewmen to save the ship — the origin of "between a rock and a hard place" in Western languages.
Connected figures: Odysseus
Mount Etna
Tradition places the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus in Sicily: here Odysseus blinded him under the false name "Nobody" and escaped. Myth also says the volcano’s roar is the hundred-headed monster Typhon, pinned beneath the mountain by Zeus, or the forge of Hephaestus at work.
Connected figures: Odysseus · Hephaestus · Zeus
Land of the Lotus-Eaters
Odysseus’s ship was blown to North Africa, and the crew who went ashore ate the locals’ forgetful lotus, at once forgetting home and refusing to leave, and had to be dragged back to the ship by force. Ancient writers identified the place as the island of Djerba.
Connected figures: Odysseus
Nemea
The first of the Twelve Labors: the Nemean Lion was invulnerable to weapons, so Heracles strangled it bare-handed and wore its pelt ever after. Tiryns, where the labors were set, lies not far to the southeast — its massive walls were thought by the ancients to be built by Cyclopes.
Connected figures: Heracles
Pillars of Heracles
For the tenth labor, to seize the cattle of Geryon at the western edge of the world, Heracles split a mountain to join the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; the rock on either shore became the "Pillars of Heracles" — the end of the ancient world, inscribed "nothing further beyond."
Connected figures: Heracles
Iolcus
Jason’s throne was usurped by his uncle, who set the condition: bring back the Golden Fleece. He gathered fifty heroes — Heracles, Orpheus, and more — and set sail from here on the Argo, the most star-studded crew in Greek myth.
The Clashing Rocks
A pair of living rocks at the mouth of the Bosphorus that slammed together, letting no ship through. The Argo first released a dove to test the timing, then rowed with all its might through the instant the rocks recoiled, losing only the ornament of its stern. From then on the rocks stood fixed forever.
Connected figures: Jason
Colchis
The Golden Fleece hung on an oak in the sacred grove of the war god, guarded by a sleepless dragon. The king’s daughter, the witch Medea, fell in love with Jason and used her potions to help him tame the fire-breathing bronze bulls and lull the dragon — at the cost of betraying her father and leaving her homeland.
Athens
Athena and Poseidon contested the naming of the city: Poseidon gave a saltwater spring, Athena an olive tree — and the olive won. The hero Theseus joined the tribute party here of his own will, bound for Crete to hunt the Minotaur.
Knossos
The labyrinth of King Minos, holding the bull-headed Minotaur. Theseus killed the monster and found his way out with Ariadne’s thread; the architect Daedalus and his son Icarus flew from Crete on wings of wax — the latter flying too high and falling into the sea. Zeus himself was born in a cave on Crete.
Connected figures: Theseus · Ariadne · Daedalus · Icarus · Zeus
Thebes
Cadmus sowed dragon’s teeth, warriors sprang up, and the city was founded. The later Oedipus answered the Sphinx’s riddle ("what walks on four legs, then two, then three?") outside its walls, yet fulfilled the prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother; later still came the "Seven Against Thebes." Half the blood and tears of Greek tragedy are supplied here.
Rome
The twins Romulus and Remus, sons of the war god Mars, were cast into the Tiber and raised by a she-wolf. The brothers fell out over the founding of the city; Romulus killed Remus and founded it, naming it for himself, on the traditional date of April 21, 753 BC.
Carthage
After the fall of Troy, Aeneas drifted here and fell in love with Queen Dido. When the gods urged him on to his mission he left without farewell; Dido climbed her own pyre and killed herself, cursing the two peoples to be enemies forever — Virgil’s mythic footnote to the Punic Wars.
Cumae
The cave of the prophetess Sibyl. Guided by her, Aeneas broke off the golden bough and entered the underworld, met the shade of his father, and was shown the coming glory of Rome — the model scene for Dante’s journey through the underworld in the Divine Comedy.