Percy Bysshe Shelley and Bertrand Russell, Penrhyndeudraeth, Gwynedd
Russell was so smitten with this achingly picturesque coastal village that he spent his final years here, scribbling his autobiography. Some years before, in nearby Tremadoc, Shelley completed the epic Queen Mab while staying at Plas Tan-yr-allt, now a holiday cottage boasting 47 acres of private wooded cliffside. If that doesn't unbind your Prometheus, there's no hope for you.
• Plas Tan-yr-allt sleeps six from £950 a week (or sleeps 12 from £1,500); 01766 514545, tanyrallt.co.uk
Johann Goethe, Staubbach Falls, Switzerland
Long before Arthur Conan Doyle made tumbling down Swiss waterfalls fashionable, Johann Goethe visited the 72 that plunge into the Lauterbrunnen Valley. The one that captured his heart, and to which he dedicated his poem Song of the Spirits Over the Waters, was Staubbach, a 300m-high torrent that "rolls and ripples into the abyss". His words were set to music by Schubert, so pop it on your MP3 player and immerse your soul in beauty.
• Hotel Staubbach has doubles (with views of the waterfall) from £93; +41 33 855 5454, staubbach.com
Somerset Maugham, Cap Ferrat, France
Writer, compulsive traveller and occasional spy, Somerset Maugham bought Villa Mauresque in 1928 and began a period of sensationally prolific literary output amid the French Riviera's most beautiful people. They're still on the wooded peninsula of Cap Ferrat today. Would-be Maughams can avoid bankruptcy by nursing a café rallongé at the otherwise eye-wateringly expensive Grand-Hôtel du Cap Ferrat before returning to the humbler but still lovely Hotel Bagatelle to pen their excoriating first novels about the lives of the feckless locals.
• Hotel Bagatelle has doubles from €80; +33 4 9301 3286, hotelbagatelle.free.fr
Le Corbusier, Santorini, Greece
The Swiss-born pioneer visited this Cycladic isle in the 1920s and modern architecture has never been the same since. Taking his cue from the "solid volumes" of the island's whitewashed cubic dwellings, he came up with the famous notion that a house should be "a machine for living". The recent conversion of a cubic factory into a glorious villa means we can now all go to Santorini and live in a house that once made machines. The irony pours out like ouzo.
• Villa Fabrica sleeps from six to 16 from €730 to €1,670 a night (including hire car); +30 22860 22220, santorinivillas.net/villa-fabrica
Graham Greene, Havana, Cuba
In the 1950s, Greene spent a great deal of time being driven around Cuba by an extremely superstitious chauffeur. His experience inspired Our Man in Havana, the darkly comic story of a vacuum-cleaner salesman turned highly questionable spy. The Cuban capital is famous for the vintage American cars that trundle its streets, so "doing a Greene" is all but obligatory. Write out the full name of the 18th-century Palacio del Marqués de San Felipe y Santiago de Bejucal (now a hotel) and you've knocked off 10 words of your novel already.
• Hotel Palacio del Marqués has doubles from £122; +31 20 7947962, habaguanexhotels.com
JMW Turner, Chichester Canal, West Sussex
Turner's painting of a double-masted brig lolling peacefully beneath a fiery sunset and a cathedral's distant gaze conjures up a time when life was slower and blackberries and apples were just things you ate. Today the erstwhile ship canal's five-mile towpath can be walked or cycled – or you can hire a rowing boat (chichestercanal.org.uk).
• Boutique B&B Richmond House has doubles from £80 (free upgrade for weekday bookings in January); 01243 771464, richmondhousechichester.co.uk
Paul Gauguin, Martinique
Yes, all right, we know Gauguin lived on Tahiti. What is less well-recorded is his five-month sojourn on Martinique, which was arguably an even greater influence on his painting. The town of St Pierre, near which the artist stayed, was destroyed by the 1902 eruption of Mont Pelée but you can visit the Gauguin Museum there and seek your muse in a rather swisher beach hut in car-free village of Les Anses d'Arlet.
• Localizé huts sleep two from €378 a week; +596 059 668 6478, localize.fr
Leonard Woolf, Sri Lanka
Before his star was eclipsed by his wife, Leonard Woolf spent several years in the British civil service in Ceylon (as was). His novel of colonial life there – The Village in the Jungle – became an instant classic, a sort of Mayor of Casterbridge set in the tropics. Now you can design your own holiday to follow in the protagonists' footsteps while absorbing some of the island's complex history along the way.
• Tailor-made Sri Lanka holiday from £1,595 (15 days including flights, accommodation and chauffeur/guide); 01273 600030, responsibletravel.com
Rudyard Kipling and Allen Ginsberg, Madhya and Uttar Pradesh, India
While Rudyard trekked around tirelessly for the Civil and Military Gazette, Allen sought inspiration from the Bengali poets of the Hungryalist movement and tested the limits of the bohemian lifestyle in India's holiest city, Varanasi. Voyages Jules Verne's tour covers both – nights under the stars in the landscape that gave birth to The Jungle Book and Kim, and time in Varanasi for some Ginsbergian howling.
• Voyages Jules Verne's "Into Kipling Country" tour costs from £2,095 (12 nights with flights and accommodation); 020-7616 1000, vjv.com
William S Burroughs, Tangier, Morocco
In 1953, when Tangier was still a so-called International Zone, it played host for several months to Burroughs. Inspired by the city's shadowy soul, he penned his collection of short stories, Interzone, and lived the experiences that later became Naked Lunch. Stay at La Tangerina and you enter your own interzone – aged trunks, 1920s mirrors, and venerable radio sets merge with the traditional decor of this old Moroccan house. For the full effect, be sure to strip off for your midday meal.
• La Tangerina has doubles from €55; i-escape.com
• this article was amended on 18 January 2011 to clarify the location of Plas Tan-yr-allt as Tremadoc, not Penrhyndeudraeth.
