Harry Potter Film Sights
By Gene Openshaw, co-author of eight of Rick's travel guidebooks
Harry Potter's story is set in a magical Britain, and all of the places mentioned in the books except London are fictional, but you can visit many real film locations. Some of the locations are closed to visitors, though, or can be an un-magical disappointment in person. But quicker than you can say "Lumos," let's shine a light on where to get your Harry Potter fix if you're a die-hard fan.
Spoiler Warning: Information below will ruin surprises for those who haven't yet read the Harry Potter series or seen the movies.
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| Big Ben welcomes Harry to the big city. |
London
In the first film, Harry first realizes his wizard powers when talking with a boa constrictor, filmed at the London Zoo's Reptile House in Regent's Park (Tube: Great Portland Street).
London bustles along oblivious to the parallel universe of wizards, hidden in the magical Diagon Alley (filmed, like many of the other fictional settings, on a set at Leavesden Studios, north of London). The goblin-run Gringotts Wizarding Bank, though, was filmed in the real-life marble-floored Exhibition Hall of Australia House (Tube: Temple), home of the Australian Embassy.
Harry catches the train to Hogwarts at King's Cross Station. Inside the glass-roofed train station, on a pedestrian sky bridge over the tracks, Hagrid gives Harry a train ticket. Harry heads to platform 9¾. You'll find a fun re-creation
— complete with a Platform 9¾ sign and a luggage cart that appears to be disappearing into the wall — on the way to platform 9. (Walk towards the pedestrian bridge and make a left at the arch.)
In film #3, Harry careens through London's lamp-lit streets on a purple three-decker bus that dumps him at the Leaky Cauldron. In this film, the pub's exterior was shot on rough-looking Stoney Street at the southeast edge of Borough Street Market, by The Market Porter pub (Tube: London Bridge).
In film #5, the Order of the Phoenix takes to the sky on broomsticks over London, passing by plenty of identifiable landmarks at night. Far beneath them glow the London Eye, Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace.
Cinema buffs can visit Leicester Square (Tube: Leicester Square), where Daniel Radcliffe and other stars strolled past paparazzi and down red carpets to the Odeon Theater to watch the movies' premieres.
Near Bath
The mysterious side of Hogwarts is often set in the elaborate, fan-vaulted corridors of the Gloucester Cathedral cloisters, 50 miles north of Bath. When Harry and Ron set out to save Hermione, they look down a long, dark Gloucester hallway and spot a 20-foot troll at the far end. And it's here that the walls whisper ominously to Harry, and letters in blood warn: "Enemies of the heir, beware."
The scene showing Harry being chosen for Gryffindor's Quidditch team was shot in the halls of the 13th-century Lacock Abbey, 13 miles east of Bath. Harry attends Professor Snape's class in one of the Abbey's bare, peeling-plaster rooms — appropriate to Snape's temperament.
Oxford
Hogwarts, Harry's prestigious wizarding prep school, is a movie creation. But it's made from a number of locations, many of them real places in Oxford.
Christ Church College — with plenty of Harry-related sights that you can tour — inspired two film sets familiar to Potter fans. In the first film, the kids are ferried to Hogwarts, and then ascend a stone staircase that leads into the Great Hall. The high-ceilinged dining hall used throughout the films — looking like a much larger version of what you see in Oxford — is filled with students at long rows of tables (as it is today at lunchtime, minus the weightless candles and flaming braziers).
Later in the first film, Harry sneaks into the restricted book section of Hogwarts Library under a cloak of invisibility. This scene was filmed inside Oxford's Duke Humfrey's Library. Hermione reads about the Sorcerer's Stone here, too.
At the end of the first film, Harry awakens from his dark battle into the golden light of the Hogwarts infirmary, filmed in a big-windowed Divinity School (downstairs). In film #4 (Goblet of Fire), Mad-Eye Moody turns Draco into a ferret on the grounds of Bodleian Library.
Durham and Northeast England
In the first film, Harry walks with his white owl, Hedwig, through a snowy cloister courtyard located in Durham Cathedral. The bird soars up and over the church's twin 13th-century towers.
Harry first learns to fly a broomstick on the green grass of Hogwarts school grounds, filmed inside the walls of Alnwick Castle, located 30 miles from Newcastle. In film #2, this is where the Weasleys' flying car crashes into the Whomping Willow.
Scotland
A lot of what you'll see in the Harry Potter movies — especially scenes of the Hogwarts grounds — was filmed in craggy, cloudy, mysterious Scotland.
The Hogwarts Express train that carries Harry, Ron, and Hermione to school each year is filmed along an actual steam-train line. The movies show the train chugging across the real-life Glenfinnan Viaduct, where — in film #4 — the Dementors stall the train and torture Harry.
Steal Falls, a waterfall at the base of Ben Nevis, is the locale for Harry's battle with a dragon for the Triwizard Tournament in film #4.
Other scenes filmed in the Highlands include a desolate hillside with Hagrid's stone hut in Glencoe, which was the main location for outdoor filming in Azkaban. Hagrid skips stones across the water at Loch Eilt, west of Fort William.
For lots more information, check out our best-selling Rick Steves' Great Britain guidebook — or join us on one of our free-spirited Britain tours!