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Fiction tourism aims at locations famous from literature, motion pictures, and television series, including film sets, motion picture studios, theme parks, and museums. Even locations featured in video games can attract travellers.

Specific works and franchises

While series such as Breaking Bad and The Wire mostly take place within one city, others are spread out across a country, or even several continents.

Locations

Map
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Map of Fiction tourism

Africa

Namibia

The Namibian desert is the shooting location of the 2015 film 'Max Mad: Fury Road'

South Africa

  • 1 Soweto in Johannesburg. District 9 was filmed in South Africa in the townships of Soweto. 

Tunisia

  • 2 Matmata (Tunisia). Scenes of the desert planet Tatooine in a number of Star Wars films were filmed here. Also see the nearby town of Tataouine, where a little filming was also done. 

Asia

  • Mumbai, India: The home of Bollywood.
  • Yongin, Miryang and other locations around South Korea are visited by domestic and international fans of K-drama shot there.
  • Kaiping, in southern China, is known for its UNESCO-listed "castles", strange houses built by overseas Chinese. It was the setting for the hit Chinese movie Let the Bullets Fly.

Europe

Fans of the world's most famous agent will immediately recognize this building
  • 3 Stockholm, Sweden. Location of many Nordic Noir works, such as the Millennium (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) series, the Martin Beck franchise, and Let the Right One In. 
  • 4 Ystad, Sweden. Home of Detective Wallander. 
  • 5 Copenhagen, Denmark. Location for Nordic Noir works, such as the Pusher series, The Killing, and The Bridge 
  • Salzburg, Austria: Home of the classic musical Sound of Music.
  • Görlitz is one of the few cities in Central Europe with an old town that looks convincingly "pre World War II" and as such many movies set in that era have been made here since the 1990s.
  • London: See Literary London for complete coverage.
    • While the James Bond 007 series have been filmed all around the world, all of them also feature London — at the very least the MI6 headquarters. Also, countless other British and non-British movies and tv-series take place and have been filmed in London.
  • Braveheart was recorded in Scotland (Glencoe, Stirling, Loch Leven, Glen Coe and Glen Nevis Valley) as well as Ireland.
  • Munich is home to the Bavaria Film Studios where both German and international films have been shot. Also, probably half of the many German crime drama series take place in Munich.
  • Paris, one of the world's most prominent cities, has been the backdrop of many films, both French and international. It was also in Paris the world's first public movie screening took place in 1895.
  • 1 Portmeirion Village (Portmeirion is 1 ½ miles South of Porthmadog), ☏ +44 1766 770000, . Portmeirion was created by the architect Clough Williams-Ellis from 1925 to 1976. The location of the cult 60s TV series The Prisoner, "I am not a number. I am a free man" 
  • Babelsberg, a suburb of Berlin and administratively part of Potsdam also has film studios where - among others - one of the longest running German soap operas ("Gute Zeiten schlechte Zeiten" aka GZSZ) is shot.
  • The BBC equivalent of that one rock in Southern California (see below) is a quarry in Wales, where according to one probably apocryphal account two series were shot at the same time without either production knowing of the other, thus the two got in the way of each other.

Oceania

Australia

New Zealand

  • New Zealand: Famous for the Lord of the Rings franchise.
    • Waikato – the set of Hobbiton is still here and can be visited
    • Tongariro National Park – the location of some scenes, such as Mordor
    • Queenstown – another location, and has Lord of the Rings tours

North America

United States

California
Leo Carrillo Beach, the backdrop for many film and TV scenes

In California, they don't throw their garbage away - they make it into TV shows. – Woody Allen

California in general has been (and continues to be) used for many films given that it is the center of the American mainstream film industry and offers a wide variety of different landscapes that can be used to represent different environments; for example, one rock in Southern California has reportedly been used as a backdrop in dozens of incredibly varied movies.

  • Los Angeles is quite arguably the greatest place in the world for cinema tourism, being the home to Hollywood and the backdrop for countless movies; so many that it would be absurd to try and list even just the most famous ones here. Besides the touristy district of Hollywood, with its star-lined Walk of Fame, numerous old theaters and iconic signs, most of the active film and television studios are located in adjacent communities, such as Burbank, the home of Warner Brothers, Disney, and NBC-Universal, Century City, headquarters of 20th Century Fox, Culver City with its historic film studios, and Fairfax, home to CBS' main television studio. Many of these studios offer tours and with careful planning it is possible to obtain tickets to a taping of a television show. Additionally, the Los Angeles area is home to theme parks such as Universal Studios and Disneyland, both large-scale celebrations of their company's respective films.
  • 2 Leo Carrillo Beach. Movies filmed here include Grease, Gidget, 1984's The Karate Kid, The Craft, Point Break, The Usual Suspects, Inception, and Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus as wells as the first season's opening scene of episode 1 of The Rockford Files. (updated Oct 2015)
  • Despite the name, the annual San Diego Comic-Con has become a major event in the cinema world. Taking place in San Diego every July, this is one of the world's biggest fan conventions and tickets are expensive and hard to get, but if you're lucky enough to get inside you can expect plenty of big-name film and television stars and producers, in addition to representatives of major toy manufacturers and the video game and comic industries, showing up to offer sneak peeks at major upcoming releases.
  • San Francisco has been the backdrop for numerous famous films, including Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, the Dirty Harry series, and the action movie The Rock, among many others.
Midwest
  • Chicago —the country's third largest city is also featured in a couple of movies, some of them being the The Blues Brothers, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, The Fugitive, Batman Begins and of course Chicago.
East Coast
  • New York City has been the backdrop for countless motion pictures and television series; again, so many that it would be fruitless to try and list them all here. In contrast to L.A., New York is more reputed for its indie film scene, with numerous excellent theaters catering to that clientele and oftentimes hosting discussions with the makers of some fine, lesser-known films. Additionally, most of America's major media and television networks are headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, with most of the popular late night and morning talk shows taped here, usually with tickets available to the public.
  • 7 Baltimore, Maryland. The Wire Tour is an itinerary for the acclaimed HBO series The Wire. 
  • Washington, D.C. any film involving the American political leadership in any form or role will have Washington as a backdrop — frequent occurrences are the White House, U.S. Capitol or the Pentagon.
  • Seneca Falls is widely believed to be the original Baxter Falls in the holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life.
Southwest

Canada

  • 10 Toronto. A place where a surprising number of movies (and series) were shot that are set elsewhere. If you come to the city you might notice that some houses that are in New York or San Francisco according to your favorite sitcom are actually here. 

South America

Brazil

Many Brazilian action films have taken place in the dangerous favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro, like City of God, the two Tropa de Elite movies and Bus 174.

See also


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