10 famous movie locations you can actually visit

It may be getting slowly swallowed on all sides by luxury condo towers, but – praise, Nora Ephron – the iconic Lower East Side sandwich spot Katz’s Deli is still standing on Houston Street. Alongside its sky-high pastramis and copious wall signage, the deli is, of course, known for the scene in When Harry Met Sally... where Meg Ryan’s character demonstrates her impressive talent for faking orgasms to both Billy Crystal and an entire room full of stunned patrons. (Who could forget that famous line delivered by a nearby diner: ‘I’ll have what she’s having!’) For those looking for an extra level of detail, you can even enjoy a sandwich underneath a hanging sign marking the exact spot where the scene was filmed. (Well, half a sandwich. No way you’ll ever be able to finish a full one in a single sitting.) The sign reads: ‘Where Harry met Sally… Hope you have what she had! Enjoy!’ Will Gleason

Fun fact The iconic ‘I’ll have what she’s having!’ line was actually delivered by the mother of the film’s director, Rob Reiner.

🎬Read our review of When Harry Met Sally...

📍Discover the best delis in New York

If there really is a place called Downtonia (cc Tatler), this huge Hampshire pile is its capital city. In Downton Abbey it’s the home of the Grantham family – although bonus marks if you recognise it as Totleigh Towers from Fry and Laurie’s evergreen Jeeves and Wooster. IRL, it’s the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon who live here and who have welcomed the show’s cast and crew over six seasons to film in the house and on its 1,000 acres of grounds – oh, and two, soon to be three movie spin-offs. More imposing than the Dowager Countess herself, the castle was completed in 1842 and is dripping in history (the fifth Earl was on the expedition that discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun). Different tours take place throughout the year and are usually packed with fans on a Downton pilgrimage.

Fun fact Katie Price and Peter Andre held their wedding here in 2005. Whatever would the Dowager Countess say?

Rue Lepic is one of those roads that hums constantly. Sloping up touristy Montmartre, this street is filled with traditional shops, from butcher and bakery to fishmonger, and you can’t move for all the locals having casual chinwags on the pavement. It’s just the kind of place you’d choose to set a film that evokes an oh-so quaint and nostalgic image of Paris – which was exactly what Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet was going for. Want to retrace the title character’s steps? You should start with a double espresso at the Café des Deux Moulins. This is where Amélie herself waits tables, and few sensations beat wiling away the hours at one of the prized terrace seats. The service is brusque, and music blares constantly, but that only enhances the vibe. Your next stop? Monsieur Collignon’s greengrocer on the Rue des Trois-Frères: another of the movie’s key locations. Huw Oliver

Fun fact: The café is named after two local windmills: the Moulin de la Galette, which is now a restaurant, and the Moulin Rouge, which is better known as the birthplace of the can-can.

Welcome to New Asgard: Better known as St Abbs, a harbourside hamlet in Berwickshire about the size of Thor’s actual abs and the only fishing village in the Marvelverse. Retooling it to represent Tønsberg in Norway in Avengers: Endgame, directors Joe and Anthony Russo set up camp here during production. It’s where Chris Hemsworth’s Norse god comes to nurse his sorrows – and several hundred beers – until his fellow Avengers cajole him out of it. If he’d stayed he might have enjoyed the coastal walks, clifftop views and top-notch scuba diving. There’s no pub in the harbour but you can pick up one of the Ebbcarrs Cafe’s enviable lemon curd sponges. Which might explain Thor’s waistline. Phil de Semlyen

Fun fact Thor’s New Asgard local, The Cormorant and Tun, can be found at 6 Seaview Terrace (though it’s a house not a pub).

Forget The Joker steps in the Bronx, this Georgetown spot is the real stairway to movie heaven. Like many of the entries on this list, The Exorcist Steps’ notoriety is at least partly the result of one movie fan’s passion. DC resident and The Exorcist superfan Andrew Huff campaigned for the steps, the site of the horror classic’s bloody climax, to be made an official landmark. After a few months of canvassing support and $10,000 later, director William Friedkin and screenwriter-novelist William Peter Blatty were unveiling an official plaque at the foot of the steps. ‘I love the city and horror films, especially this one,’ says Huff, ‘so it became a labour of love for both’. There are 75 stairs in all, running alongside a building that once housed streetcars (back when the city had them) and ‘the Exorcist House’ at 3600 Prospect Street. Phil de Semlyen

Fun fact During filming, Georgetown uni students charged for rooftop access to watch stuntman Chuck Waters lob himself down the newly rubber-lined steps – twice. 

🎬Read our review of The Exorcist

Almost overnight, Parasite’s Oscars win transformed this humble Seoul pizzeria into a cult tourist hotspot. In the movie it’s called Pizza Age and it’s where the Kim family earn a very modest crust folding thousands of pizza boxes. Away from its film work, it’s better known as Sky Pizza, a ten-seat restaurant that, thanks to Bong Joon-ho’s magnificent black comedy, is positively thriving. Sales doubled when Parasite won the Best Picture Oscar, with local pride (and an influx of tourists) translating into a new-found appetite for sweet-potato pizza and selfies. Surely a strategic tie-in with Lenny’s Pizzeria from Saturday Night Fever is only a matter of time? Phil de Semlyen

Fun fact: The Kims’ side hustle was partly inspired by a Canadian, Breanna Gray, whose Jedi-like pizza box folding skills the family marvel at on YouTube.  

🎬Read our review of Parasite

The iconic British red telephone box (famous, often, as a place to pee or sleep or worse) may have gone out of general service back in the 1980s, but there are still over 8,000 of them in use. This one in a sleepy Aberdeenshire coastal village has a strong Hollywood pedigree. In Bill Forsyth’s 1983 classic Local Hero, it’s from here that a young American oil executive repeatedly phones his Texas boss (Burt Lancaster) to report on his progress at trying to buy up the village to turn it into a lucrative oil refinery. Now you, too, can turn up in the village and pretend to act out scenes from Forsyth’s McDavid-v-Goliath crowd-pleaser. Dave Calhoun

Fun fact: There was no red phone box in Pennan when they made Local Hero; they used a prop. The phone company installed a real one afterwards to cash in on the popularity of the film. 

🎬Read our review of Local Hero

San Francisco Bay’s fortified and now defunct island prison inspired on-screen stories almost as soon as it opened in 1934. But it was after its closure in 1963 that it took off as an occasional filming location, starting with Point Blank and continuing with Clint Eastwood thriller Escape from Alcatraz. As an active national park now – and a remarkably popular one whose reservations book months in advance – you can’t exactly shut the entire thing down for shooting. So while the delightfully ridiculous The Rock did indeed partially film on the island, most of the Bayhem were shot on a soundstage. (Alas, you won’t actually find a minecart with Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery underneath the island.) Michael Juliano

Fun fact: Miles of power cable was run beneath the bay for 1979’s Escape from Alcatraz, restoring electricity to the deteriorating island.

🎬Read our review of The Rock

Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst’s coastal castle remains one of the most unforgettable monuments to unfathomable wealth. In the 1930s, Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies kept the San Simeon estate’s grounds filled with zebras, camels and kangaroos, and the interior with stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Mary Pickford. Despite those Old Hollywood connections, though, the castle has only hosted two notable film shoots: a scene in Spartacus at the ancient Greek- and Roman-inspired Neptune pool, and a Lady Gaga music video. But Hearst’s life story and the castle’s gothic touches served as the clear inspiration for Charles Foster Kane’s surreal tomb of luxury, Xanadu, in Citizen Kane. Watch the film’s opening newsreel of Xanadu and then come see for yourself. Michael Juliano

Fun fact: Mank’s recreation of the mansion is the next best thing to visiting. David Fincher’s team didn’t set out to replicate it, but the dining room they created – all stone, arches and tapestries – nails its opulence.

🎬Read our review of Citizen Kane