Filming locations in New Jersey

Visiting New Jersey: a set-jetting guide. The suburbs and turnpikes across the river from New York are the lived-in backdrop of The Sopranos, television's defining mob saga. There is no grand set to seek out here, the pleasure is altogether more everyday: two real, still-trading spots from the show, an old-fashioned ice-cream parlour and a roadside pizzeria, both of which you can walk straight into and order from, just as the Soprano family might have.

Holsten's, in Bloomfield north-west of Newark, is the unmissable one. This beloved, old-fashioned ice-cream parlour and sweet shop is where the series famously cuts to black in its final scene, and it remains a real, working diner open daily. Fans ask to sit in the booth from the finale, order onion rings and a sundae, and find a plaque marking the moment. The chocolate counter alone is a New Jersey institution.

A short way off sits Pizzaland in North Arlington, the tiny roadside pizzeria that flashes by in the show's famous opening-credits drive home. It is a real, still-open slice shop, so the move is to stop in for a classic New Jersey slice and snap the unchanged storefront, which looks just as it did in the credits. It sits on the Belleville Turnpike, an easy stop to fold into a wider Sopranos drive.

The way to do this is by car, threading the two together with whatever else catches your eye along the turnpikes, exactly the unglamorous geography the show made its own. New Jersey has no single base that ties it up neatly, so let the drive itself be the day: a sundae in a Bloomfield booth, a slice on the Belleville Turnpike, and the ordinary suburban sprawl in between standing in for the world of the series.