Our world is filled with amazing places just waiting to be discovered. Through reading—especially historical fiction—I’ve learned about quaint towns, ancient buildings, and hidden treasures that I’d never heard of before. Many have found their way onto my growing “must-see” list. While I have managed to cross off a few, the list keeps getting bigger, just like my TBR (to-be-read) pile. Curious, hoping I was not alone, I asked some of my fellow Lanterns whether their reading has influenced their travel plans.

C.V. Lee, author of The de Carteret Chronicles: Legacy of Rebels series

Yes, I have visited several places because of books I have read.

Like most people, I read The Diary of Anne Frank, so when I visited Amsterdam, of course I toured the Anne Frank House. Hard to believe so many people lived in such a small place, never able to go out.

When I was in college, I was fascinated by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era. So when I traveled to France, a tour Versailles was on the itinerary along with Marie Antoinette’s favorite hideaway, the Heameau de la Reine (the Queen’s Hamlet), built to look like a peasant village. And having read numerous books about Napoleon, I couldn’t resist taking a day-trip out of Paris to visit his favorite home, Chateau de Malmaison. A beautiful place where Napoleon had his Council Room decorated to look like the inside of a tent.

While visiting Italy, I read the novel about Michaelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy. I added Florence as one of the stops so that I could see the marvelous statue of David at the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. What an amazing work of art! The day we had planned to view the ceiling he painted in the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican was closed to visitors. What a disappointment. So that place remains on my long list of places to see.

Anne M Beggs, author of the Dalquin Series:

In 2001, we took a family trip to Scotland, Outlander in hand. Yes, we were going anyway to explore family history, but Diana Gabaldon gave us a whole new insight into the Jacobite uprising and our Scots ancestry. Speaking of books and the Scotland trip, we took the train from King’s Cross, London to Scotland…BEFORE the station installed a Platform 9 and ¾. What a great time we had being muggles, trying to find it.

Better still, I secreted Bertie Bott Every Flavor Beans in my travel bag. Imagine my kids and husband getting every flavored beans on the Hogwart’s Express. Literature added so much to this memorable trip.

Kathryn Pritchett shares a story about traveling somewhere because someone else read about the place.

My husband has an unusual name. One that his grandfather and father bore before him. Grandpa Pritchett went by Mel, my father-in-law by Jed, and my husband by MJ. When pressed to go somewhere for a big birthday, Melrose Jed Pritchett III said he wanted to go to the source of this name he’s had to explain all his life. We headed to Scotland to visit Melrose Abbey.

Family lore has it that his great-grandmother, a poor farmer’s wife in rural Utah, was inspired by the poetry of Sir Walter Scott and his description of the ruined 12th century monastery when she named her ninth child Melrose.

Perhaps it was the haunting Gothic architecture, best seen by “pale moonlight,” that captured her fancy. Or maybe the idea that Robert the Bruce’s heart was buried there. Or possibly something less grim, like the carved gargoyle of a pig playing a bagpipe.

We don’t really know, but when her son was born in 1907, she gave him the name of an ancient Scottish ruin bearing the “scrolls that teach thee to live and die.”

And a little over a century later we journeyed to the Scottish Borders where the ruins of “fair Melrose” still tower. We had a marvelous trip for which I’m very grateful to that literature-loving great-grandmother-in-law. It’s a destination I’d happily recommend to anyone, including, when she gets a little older, our two-year-old granddaughter, Melrose.

What places have books inspired you to visit? Or what places have you added to your “must-see” travel list?