Film locations, the sagas shot in places you can walk.

Shoots and sets: what you will find

Here are, arranged by saga, the Geocalia places where scenes from the great film sagas were shot. A filming location is a real place that appeared in the film: a villa, a beach, a square, a monastery. There are no sets or signs; the fun is in recognising it. A theme attraction is the opposite: nothing was filmed there, but everything revolves around the saga. Of these only those at Disneyland Paris are included, and we say so in each case. Each place links to its page, with hours, prices and how to get there.

Star Wars: a lake, a walled city and two attractions

The saga filmed little in Geocalia's destinations, but what it filmed is easy to visit. On Lake Como, the Villa del Balbianello, in Lenno, is the lakeside retreat in Attack of the Clones, where Anakin and Padmé kiss for the first time. What you recognise is the terraced garden and the Durini loggia, open to the two arms of the lake. The villa belongs to the FAI, must always be booked and is reached by a boat of a few minutes from Lenno.

Dubrovnik was Canto Bight, the dazzling city of The Last Jedi: the crew filmed there for seven days in March 2016.

The rest of Star Wars on this map is not filming. At Disneyland Park, near Paris, Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain and Star Tours are attractions of the saga in Discoveryland: a roller coaster, from 1.20 m in height, and a flight simulator, from 1.02 m.

James Bond: from a Swiss summit to a Thessaly rock

Bond is the saga with the most locations on these pages. The most complete is the Schilthorn, in the Jungfrau region: the round building on the summit, the Piz Gloria, at 2,970 metres, appeared in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Up there, the Walk of Fame remembers the cast and crew with 15 panels along the ridge, and the revolving restaurant still makes a full turn in 45 minutes. You go up in four cable-car stages from Stechelberg, via Mürren.

In Meteora, the Holy Trinity Monastery is the St Cyril's of For Your Eyes Only. The monks did not allow filming inside, so what appears is the rock tower and the monastery on top; today you climb by a staircase carved in the rock and it is closed on Thursdays.

Matera was the great Italian location of No Time to Die. The motorbike jump is in Piazza del Duomo, above the Civita, and the car that spins in a circle, in Piazza San Giovanni; everything can be seen free and independently, on a walk through the locations that adds to the one through the Sassi. And back on Lake Como, the same Villa del Balbianello is where Bond recovers with Vesper in Casino Royale, with their kiss under the loggia.

In Cabo de Gata, Spain's tourist board places scenes from Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery, at Los Escullos and El Palmer; the stretch of coast is covered on the route from Los Escullos to La Isleta del Moro.

Gladiator: the wheat of Pienza

The Elysian Fields of Gladiator, the wheat field crossed by a dirt track, are in the Val d'Orcia, at the foot of Pienza. The track leaves the Corsignano parish church and goes towards the Terrapille farm stay: you walk it, free, among working crops. Maximus's house is another estate, Poggio Manzuoli, between San Quirico d'Orcia and Pienza: private, seen only from the gate, with its double row of cypresses. In Pienza itself The English Patient was also filmed, in Piazza Pio II.

The season matters more than at any other location on this list. The wheat is green in spring and golden at the start of summer; after the harvest what is left is bare earth, which also makes a photo, but is no longer the one from the film.

Indiana Jones: a beach in Almería and a façade in Venice

In Cabo de Gata, Mónsul beach is the one in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with Harrison Ford and Sean Connery: the dune, the lava flows and the Peineta rock are still the same. In San José, Casa Miguel has a dining room full of mementoes of the films shot in the province.

In the same film, the Venetian library where Indiana finds the clue to the Grail is the façade of the church of San Barnaba, in Venice. The interiors were shot in a studio, so a visit to Campo San Barnaba is a twenty-minute stop in Dorsoduro.

At Disneyland Paris, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril is a roller coaster in Adventureland, from 1.40 m: a theme attraction, not a filming location.

Narnia and the other sagas

In Bohemian Switzerland, the great sandstone arch of the Pravčická brána was part of the set of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first Narnia film, shot there in 2004. You can no longer walk on the arch; it is seen from the terraces of the site.

Harry Potter and Game of Thrones have pages of their own, because each makes a whole trip: the Harry Potter locations, with the studio on the outskirts of London, and the Game of Thrones locations, from Dubrovnik to northern Spain.

How to combine several in one trip

The locations are spread across half of Europe and do not form a route. The practical thing is to choose one as your reason and link it to what is already nearby. Lake Como is an hour from Milan by train, and Venice is the other great gateway to northern Italy: Balbianello and San Barnaba fit into the same trip. The Val d'Orcia can be done from Rome in a long day by car; Matera, from Bari. Meteora needs at least a night in Kalambaka.