Dickens (along with contemporary commentators) describes it as a place where stolen handkerchiefs (Fagin’s stock in trade) were sold, as well as the center of the used clothing trade. Dickens adds that “it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop,” and, intriguingly, for historians of British cuisine “its fried-fish warehouse.” Today it is a private road, with no through traffic, although the public can walk through, using it as a short cut, a place to smoke or to try to park a bicycle.

At the corner of Greville Street is an office rental space that advertises on its website that it is the “exact location of Fagin’s Den,” adding, “it’s improved since then.”

A bas relief tun (wine cask) from the front of the One Tun at 125 Saffron Hill. A painted sign in front of the – quite fancy – pub claims it as a place where Dickens drank, and the real-life location of Fagin’s fictional local, the Three Cripples.

Named for the medieval fields of crocuses whose stigmas provide the spice saffron, the neighborhood was agricultural through the 17th century. By Oliver’s time, it was densely populated with dilapidated housing: “A dirtier or more wretched place he had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours.”

Not mentioned in the passage above, the Fleet (still aboveground in areas in 1837) runs underneath Ray Street, before turning south alongside the tracks of the Metropolitan Line underneath the Farringdon Road. Once a navigable tributary of the Thames, it had become a stagnant ditch. Dogs died in it, runaway pigs were said to live in it, certainly industrial, household and human waste were dumped into it. It also provided the perfect way to dispose of a crime victim.

In the 18th century it had been the scene of organized dog fights, bear baiting and boxing matches, attracting drovers and butchers from Smithfield as well as upper-class “sporting” gentlemen.

The culinary theme continues with the Quality Chop House (opened in 1869), and the Eagle, which has been serving Italian food alongside pints of beer (and glasses of wine) ever since 1991, and was one of the first of the then unusual pub/restaurant hybrids to be described as a “gastropub.”

Oliver’s route is particularly well served by street markets in the present day. Chapel Market is held on a street near the site of the Angel, while Leather Lane is conveniently close to Fagin’s hideout. And Oliver went right through the site of Exmouth Market. All have stalls serving a wide variety of street foods, augmenting neighborhood restaurants.

From the 17th century, there was a spa at Sadler’s Wells. The theater grew up to entertain those who came to take the waters. In 1838 — even before the serialization of “Oliver Twist” had been completed — a theatrical version of the story was being performed there.

The Old Red Lion, long the site of an inn of that name. The current building dates from the late 19th century and houses both a pub popular with actors and a theater (popular with drinkers?).

Originally the name of a coaching inn on what was then the edge of London. There’s still a pub called the Angel near the site, and the nearby Northern Line station is named for the inn. For Dickens it was where “London began in earnest.”

Animals being driven from the countryside to the stockyards of Smithfield Market would have entered the city at this point.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when they reached the turnpike at Islington. They crossed from the Angel into St. John’s Road; struck down the small street which terminates at Sadler’s Wells Theatre; through Exmouth Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the side of the workhouse; across the classic ground which once bore the name of Hockley-in-the-Hole; thence into Little Saffron Hill; and so into Saffron Hill the Great: along which the Dodger scudded at a rapid pace, directing Oliver to follow close at his heels. — CHARLES DICKENS

“Oliver Twist,” published serially from 1837 to 1839, was always a guidebook of sorts, taking Dickens’s middle- and upper-class readers away from the familiar streets of the London they knew and into the world that lurked down dark alleys.

I’m an American but grew up in London, arriving there as a 5-year-old. The film of Lionel Bart’s “Oliver!” was released the month I arrived, and I was soon taken to see it. Catchy tunes aside, I found it terrifying: vicious, treacherous evil hiding around every corner, a child in peril in every scene and a rather bland hero with absolutely no superpowers beyond being secretly middle-class. What possible use could that be against Sikes and his dog? Besides, being new to the country, I wasn’t quite sure to what extent these conditions might still prevail.

Reading the book as an adult made me want to connect Dickens’s work with the real London, to see if I could find the city it described. The novel’s description of Oliver’s first moments in town (quite different from my own at the age of 5: orange-colored streetlights on a foggy motorway with tiny cars going the wrong way) includes recognizable street names and a route I could more or less follow on a modern map.

Oliver meets the Artful Dodger just outside of London. Tired, hungry and naïve, he’s happy to accept the dodgy Dodger’s offer of food and the possibility of lodgings with a “ ’spectable old gentleman” and is thus sucked into a criminal gang.

For the book’s reader, it is a more ominous progression: a trip from bad to worse, from frying pan to fire, from leafy suburb to notorious slum, a step on the all-too-likely journey from workhouse to gallows, from Islington to Fagin’s live/work loft in the Saffron Hill Rookery. From Oliver’s point of view, the Dodger is a terrible tour guide.

Charles Dickens, however, is pretty good. Names of roads have changed. Rivers have been redirected underground and 180 years of development and decay have changed a landmark or two. But Dickens’s description of Oliver’s entry into London is easy to follow. And following Oliver’s journey connects London’s 19th-century geography to the modern city.