Landmark of Lore

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Looking for a weapon out of legend? The headquarters of an Ancient Tradition? An interdimensional portal? Relics of a lost civilization? The Ancient Astronauts' spaceship? A site of untold mystic power? If they're not in the writer's capital city or hometown, they'll be here, at a Landmark of Lore.

These are the places where people are eager to believe almost anything could be found, so many tales swirl around them. Mostly they are either places rich in history, which have been the centre of stories for centuries, or places remote enough that the audience knows little about them.

Sometimes these locations will be turned into a Weaponized Landmark. Compare Ruins for Ruins' Sake, Temple of Doom, Circle of Standing Stones, which may overlap. Probably the result of Small Reference Pools. A Sister Trope to Public Domain Artifact and Public Domain Character — in essence, this can also be thought of as Public Domain Location. On a related note, see also the Tannhäuser Gate, another landmark used in a similar way to these outside of being itself fictional. A Landmark of Lore is often the subject of Alternate Landmark History. The Seven Wonders of the World are a related idea, and anything named on the lists of those seven can show up as a Landmark of Lore.

Examples include

• Angkor Wat — A genuine lost temple, deep in remote jungle.
• Atlantis — A city believed to be somewhere beneath the ocean waves.
• Area 51 — What is the U.S. government hiding in the Nevada desert?—shroud lifted slightly in 2013— was confirmed as the test base for both the U-2 spy plane and OXCART surveillance aircraft in the 1950s and 1960s.
• The Bermuda Triangle — Mysterious area where ships and planes disappear.
• El Dorado — The fabled land of gold. Other "cities of gold", such as Akator, Cibola and the City of the Caesars, have also been used.
• The Forbidden City of Beijing — Not actually mystical, but come on! It's forbidden, how can you not want to go see it?
• The Garden of Eden — the fabled site of creation and birthplace of life in Abrahamic religions.
• The Great Pyramid of Giza — Famous Egyptian landmark with a number of astronomically significant features. Last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to still survive. There are two pyramids at the Giza Necropolis that occur often, the Pyramid of Khufu (formerly largest, by two feet) and the Pyramid of Khephren (currently the largest and best preserved one). Regardless of which one it's in, the film will never show the sprawl of Giza — the world's second-largest suburb after Yokohama.
• Iram of Many Pillars — A legendary lost city that is written of in both The Qur'an and The Arabian Nights, somewhere in the Arabian desert, often conflated with the site of Ubar in Oman.
• King Solomon's Mines — In The Bible, King Solomon was said to control some extremely valuable mines, and during the 19th Century, European colonial powers hoped to find them in Darkest Africa^note Solomon was supposed to have trade routes along Africa's east coast. Often linked to the actual ruins of Great Zimbabwe, although it is now known that those were built by native Africans (specifically, the ancestors of the Shona people) during the Middle Ages.
• Machu Picchu — An Incan city in the mountains of Peru, abandoned centuries ago.
• Megiddo — A valley or mountain in Israel where the Apocalypse is fated to begin.
• Nazca, Peru — Landing strip for Ancient Astronauts.
• Rapa Nui — Remote, with enigmatic statues.
• Shangri-La — Home of mysterious monks.
• Stonehenge — Ascribed all sorts of mystic powers, usually completely ignoring all the other stone circles around Europe.
• Tokyo Tower — A modern example. Because Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe.
• Uluru (a.k.a. Ayers Rock) — A natural monolith in central Australia, sacred to local Aboriginal tribes.

Notable appearances in media: