Movies, just like a successful business, often depend on the location, location, location.

Films have long depended on lush landscapes and exotic locales, both real and imagined, as a device for telling stories. Whether it’s Tunisia filling in for an alien landscape in Star Wars or the Korean War field hospital built in a state park on the California coast for M*A*S*H , location, or the illusion of location, has always served an important part in the filmmaking process.

Every once in a while, a location becomes an integral part of the story and structure of a movie. In those instances, place becomes as important as persona, and a physical location becomes as compelling as any star.

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PETRA, JORDAN: Speaking of Mr. Spielberg, the mysterious marble palace that his hero gallops up to at the conclusion of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is no matte painting nor carefully constructed model; it’s a building known as the Treasury, part of the ancient city of Petra in Jordan. Like many of the buildings in the Middle Eastern city, the Treasury is carved out of the side of a mountain. It’s an astonishing piece or architecture that was recently named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.