Where were Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon filmed?

Westeros in Northern Ireland, and the Targaryens in Britain

HBO based Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland for all eight seasons. The interiors were built in Belfast's Paint Hall and at the Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge, and the outdoor units worked across the country, from the Mourne Mountains in County Down to the basalt cliffs of the north coast. Tourism Northern Ireland lists more than 20 filming sites, and many of them are ordinary public places: a forest park, an abbey ruin, a fishing harbour, a beech avenue on a country road. When the prequel House of the Dragon began in 2021 it moved to studios near London and found its landscapes in Great Britain instead: Cornwall, the Peak District, Surrey, Devon and, for its second and third seasons, Snowdonia and Anglesey.

Fictional places in both shows are usually composites, so expect a real landscape rather than a castle. Winterfell's courtyard is the farmyard at Castle Ward, while its towers were added digitally and its later scenes were built on set. Pyke, the Iron Islands stronghold, starts at Ballintoy Harbour on the Antrim coast. Dragonstone's beach is Downhill Strand, the Kingsroad is the Dark Hedges and the Haunted Forest is Tollymore. In House of the Dragon, St Michael's Mount in Cornwall became High Tide, the Velaryon seat on Driftmark; Holywell Bay and Kynance Cove played the Stepstones campaign; Caesar's Camp near Farnham held the opening tournament; and Dinorwig slate quarry above Llanberis became Harrenhal.

The best way to visit Northern Ireland is by car from Belfast, one area at a time. County Down makes one day: the Studio Tour at Banbridge, then Castle Ward, Inch Abbey and Tollymore around Downpatrick and Newcastle. The Causeway Coast makes another, with the Dark Hedges, Ballintoy and Larrybane close together, and Downhill Strand, Binevenagh and Cushendun as extra stops. Coach tours from Belfast cover the headline sites if you prefer not to drive. In Great Britain the House of the Dragon places are far apart, so treat them as separate trips: a Cornish day around Marazion and the Lizard, a Peak District walk at Castleton, or a few days in north Wales.

Most places in this guide are free to see from public roads, paths and beaches. The exceptions are the Studio Tour, Castle Ward and St Michael's Mount, which charge for entry, and forest parks such as Tollymore and Glenariff, which charge for cars. Several sites are on private or working land: Shillinavogy Valley, which played the Dothraki grasslands, is farmland seen only from the road; Gosford Castle is private apartments set in a public forest park; Dinorwig is a restricted quarry best seen from Padarn Country Park; and the Cairncastle slopes and Leitrim Lodge foothills have no single public viewing point, so we do not pin them.

The Game of Thrones Studio Tour is the one place where you see the production itself. It occupies the Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge, where the series was filmed, and displays sets, costumes, weapons and props from all eight seasons. It is an indoor, ticketed attraction, so it works in any weather and makes a good start or end to a Northern Ireland trip. Both shows also filmed abroad, notably in Croatia, Spain, Malta, Iceland and Morocco for Game of Thrones and in Spain and Portugal for House of the Dragon; we list those in brief at the foot of the locations page. Despite a common mix-up, VisitBritain confirms that House of the Dragon did not film in Dubrovnik.