Czech film locations: a guide from Amadeus to Cinderella

Places that act · a guide to Czech film locations

Mozart’s Vienna, James Bond’s Montenegro, winter Narnia, Cinderella’s stepmother’s estate. On screen they pass for foreign countries or fairy-tale kingdoms – yet they stand in the Czech Republic, and you can visit most of them. Barrandov Studios and well-preserved castles, châteaux and historic towns make the country a sought-after film backdrop.

This guide links our detailed articles on individual films and adds tips on combining places into a trip. We rely on the Czech Film Commission’s official lists, Wikipedia and Wikidata; where a claim rests only on fan guides, we say so. We use no stills from the films – only how the places look today.

Hollywood in the Czech Republic

• Amadeus (1984) – Forman’s Vienna is Prague and Kroměříž. Mozart really conducted the premiere of Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre; in the film his operas are performed there by candlelight.
• Casino Royale (2006) – Karlovy Vary plays Montenegro, the Grandhotel Pupp is the Hotel Splendide and the House of Commons is Prague’s Strahov Library.
• Mission: Impossible, Hellboy and Narnia – Tom Cruise on Charles Bridge, Rasputin’s mausoleum in the Vítkov memorial and winter Narnia among the Tiské stěny rocks.

The castles that act most often

Some castles appear on screen so often they deserve their own filmography. According to Wikidata, which feeds the “Filmed here” box on our monument pages:

Pernštejn has a unique double: Werner Herzog filmed Count Dracula’s castle here for Nosferatu the Vampyre in 1979, and 45 years later Robert Eggers came for his own Nosferatu (2024) – by his own account without realising at first that it was the same castle.

The Christmas classic Three Wishes for Cinderella has its own page in English and German: Three Wishes for Cinderella: the real filming locations.

Film locations by region

Stories that really happened

Not every location is a backdrop for fiction. Anthropoid (2016) tells the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and filmed the paratroopers’ last stand outside the real church on Resslova Street. The places of the assassination and the Nazi reprisals – Lidice, Ležáky, Kobylisy, Pardubice – are on our page Operation Anthropoid: the real places. These are memorials; please treat them as such.

Before you go

• Interiors are often missing. Many scenes were shot at Barrandov Studios – on site you will see the exterior, not the film set.
• Castles are seasonal. Many close in winter; Švihov, for example, opens in April. Moritzburg Castle near Dresden, where Cinderella’s ball was filmed, holds its film exhibition in winter.
• Not everything is a monument. Office buildings, stations and airports from the films are ordinary working places.
• Be considerate. Photograph hotels, offices and homes from the street, and behave respectfully at memorials.

Films are not the only stories that lead to real places: castles from Kingdom Come, the DayZ landscape and places from Czech books are in our guides to places from books and comics and places from video games, and all together in Places from stories.

Frequently asked questions

Sources for each film are in the linked articles. Film lists for castles come from Wikidata (property “filming location”); the Pernštejn Nosferatu anecdote from Robert Eggers’ interview with Empire. Photos from Wikimedia Commons.