If Chicago were an actress, she'd demand a star on her door.

Local boy-turned-director Christopher Nolan -- who cast Chi-town as Gotham City in "Batman Begins" (2005) -- gives the city star billing in "Dark Knight." No ingenue, Chicago morphs into a brooding metropolis haunted by a masked hero and a manic killer in the Warner Bros. thriller. The cast and crew spent 66 days here last summer.

It's too soon to tell, but some shots may prove as iconic as the El rattling past Elwood's window in "The Blues Brothers" (1980) and Andrew Davis' aerial views in "The Fugitive" (1993). Film lovers are free to add scenes from "Barbershop," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "High Fidelity," "Return to Me," "The Untouchables" and "Road to Perdition" to the list.

If you have yet to see "Dark Knight" -- the PG-13 blockbuster reaped nearly $160 million last weekend -- here's a cheat sheet to key locations.

* The old Chicago Post Office hosts the opening scene bank robbery.

* That's the old Brach's candy plant biting the dust as Gotham General Hospital. Special effects chief Chris Corbould and a demolition crew rigged the vacant administration building at Cicero and Kinzie to go down "like a wave, in sequence," Corbould states in the production notes. Heath Ledger's The Joker's "prank" saved the owners from hiring a wrecking ball.

* Star Christian Bale -- hearing that his stunt double would perch atop the Sears Tower -- insisted on doing the scene himself. "I said, 'Sorry, buddy, no way. I just have to do this one myself,' " he recalls. "I mean, how often do you get to be 110 stories up, looking out over all of Chicago? But it's a funny and probably quite dangerous thing, how quickly I felt very at home out there and how soon I was able to move around right on the edge, looking straight down." Word is Bale actually posed on a 60th-floor platform.

* In a wild scene, a hijacked semi cartwheels down LaSalle Street. Corbould and his team spent six weeks mapping out the stunt, flipping a test truck "in the middle of nowhere" for a dress rehearsal. City engineers OK'd the plan after deciding the street, buried utility lines and nearby buildings would be safe. The 40-foot tractor-trailer overturned on cue. "At the top of its arc, it looked almost like a skyscraper standing there, and then it just continued going over very gracefully," Nolan says.

* Navy Pier is easily recognizable in the scene where the Joker pits a boatload of civilians against a boatload of inmates.

* Breakneck chases ensue on Upper and Lower Wacker drives, Lower Randolph and on Lower Columbus. The Bat-Pod takes a detour at one point through the train station under Millennium Park.

* Two Mies van der Rohe landmarks enjoy multiple close-ups. The IBM Building houses Wayne Enterprises Boardroom, Harvey Dent's office, and the mayor's and police chief's offices. The lobby of One Illinois Plaza doubles as Bruce Wayne's penthouse. The special effects crew created sweeping "penthouse" views for the ground-level windows.

* Bruce's bedroom is actually located on the 39th floor of Hotel 71 on East Wacker Drive.

* McCormick Place West plays one of Bruce Wayne's warehouses.

* Batman corners the Joker in a replica of Trump Tower Chicago. Filmmakers shot the exterior of the real building, under construction at the time, then recreated the half-finished interior in a British soundstage. Sorry, Donald!