Following Odysseus: Nolan's The Odyssey Filming Locations

When Christopher Nolan’s production team landed in Ouarzazate in late February 2025, they were not the first to recognise what the red clay kasbahs of southern Morocco can stand in for. Gladiator filmed its arena sequences there in 1999. Game of Thrones freed the Unsullied at Aït Benhaddou in season three. But Nolan’s ambition was different in scale: 91 days of shooting across seven countries on 180-kilogram IMAX cameras, adapting a text that European civilisation has been adapting for 2,700 years. The resulting film, The Odyssey, opens on 17 July 2026, and its shooting locations span Morocco to Iceland with a geography as deliberately mythological as Homer’s original.

This guide maps every confirmed filming site, explains what was shot there, and provides the practical framework for visiting each one. The geography divides into two tracks: the Moroccan circuit around Ouarzazate and Aït Benhaddou, which is the most accessible and most cinematically significant, and the Greek circuit through the Peloponnese, which offers the deepest mythological resonance. Scotland, Iceland, and Malta round out the locations for the committed set-jetter. None of these places were chosen arbitrarily. Each carries something of the original poem in its landscape, and each rewards a visit that is not purely about the film.

Why Nolan Chose Morocco: Aït Benhaddou as Troy

The opening sequence of The Odyssey depicts the fall of Troy, and Nolan placed it at Aït Benhaddou, the ksar (fortified village) 30 kilometres west of Ouarzazate that has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. The logic is immediately visible to anyone who has stood on the opposite bank of the oued and looked up at the clay towers: the red pisé construction, the crenellated walls, the scale of the fortifications, all produce the silhouette of an ancient walled city without a single constructed set piece. Nolan visited the site personally during his Morocco location-scouting trip to Marrakech, Tahannaout, El Haouz, Essaouira, and Dakhla before selecting Aït Benhaddou as Troy.

The ksar itself is approximately 1,000 years old, built along the pre-Saharan caravan route that connected Marrakech to sub-Saharan Africa. It was a trading post for gold, salt, and spices, and its 6-storey earthen granary towers served as a defensible position for the merchants and residents sheltering within the walls. The film’s production will be its 20th major feature — a list that includes Gladiator (2000), Game of Thrones (seasons 3 and 4, where it served as the slave city of Yunkai), and Gladiator II (2024). Visitors now encounter a live working site alongside the film heritage: some of the original families who still inhabit the ksar will invite you into their courtyard for a glass of tea. Entry to the village is free; the occasional donation to the families who open their homes is entirely voluntary.

Ouarzazate: The Hollywood of the Desert

Ouarzazate itself is a production hub of a kind that has no equivalent in Africa and few counterparts in the world. Atlas Corporation Studios, 5 kilometres west of town, was founded in 1983 and is the largest studio complex on earth by surface area. Its permanent standing sets have been repainted, reconfigured, and reused across dozens of productions: the palace gate from The Living Daylights (1987) became a background element in Gladiator, which became a background element in Game of Thrones. The tour costs 80 MAD (approximately €8) and runs guided-only, which is worth observing: the guides carry production photographs and can match each section of the backlot to its celluloid history.

Kasbah Taourirt, in the centre of Ouarzazate, is the town’s other architectural landmark. Built in the 17th century and expanded by the Glaoui dynasty into a complex of up to 300 rooms and 20 riads at its peak in the 1930s, it appeared in Gladiator, Prince of Persia, and The Sheltering Sky. Entry costs 20 MAD (€2) and includes access to a small adjacent cinema museum — a former filming stage now containing props and production photographs from the major shoots. The Kasbah opens daily from 08:30 to 16:00.

For visitors who want to extend the Moroccan circuit beyond the immediate Ouarzazate area, the Skoura Palmeraie, 40 kilometres to the east, offers a completely different landscape: a 1,000-hectare oasis of date palms crossed by irrigation canals. The electric mountain bike tour covers the oasis in a half day and provides a counterpoint to the fortified clay architecture that dominates the rest of the region.

For those approaching from Marrakech — the primary entry point for the Moroccan filming locations circuit — the Atlas Mountains themselves form part of the journey rather than a detour from it. The Atlas Mountains and 5 Valleys tour runs the approach road to Ouarzazate from the opposite direction, entering the Drâa-Tafilalet region via the pre-Saharan landscape before the Tizi n’Tichka pass.

If the Moroccan desert circuit has raised your appetite for more epic-scale film location travel, the coverage in our guide to Dune Part Three filming locations applies the same set-jetting methodology to another desert-world epic — the comparison between the two productions’ landscape choices is instructive.

The Mythological Circuit: Greece’s Peloponnese

Filming in Greece took place between 10 and 21 March 2025, confirmed by the Hellenic Film Commission. The production worked across five sites in the Peloponnese, selecting a coastline that carries genuine mythological weight: Messenia, the region surrounding ancient Pylos, where Homer’s Telemachus travels to seek news of his father.

Voidokilia Beach is the centrepiece of the Greek circuit. Its shape — a perfect omega curve of sand, read from above as the Greek letter Ω — makes it one of the most recognisable beaches in southern Europe and one of the least commercially developed. There is no permanent infrastructure on the beach itself: no sunbeds, no kiosks, no beach bars. The site sits within the Natura 2000 protection network. Above the dunes at the northeastern end of the bay, Nestor’s Cave (a grotto linked in Greek mythology to Hermes’ theft of Apollo’s cattle) offers a panoramic view over the bay and was used by Matt Damon for filming sequences. The cave is accessible on foot from the beach in approximately 20 minutes.

Methoni Castle, 10 kilometres south of Pylos, is a 13th-century Venetian fortress on a promontory above the sea. The tower at its extremity, the Bourtzi, sits on a separate islet connected to the main castle by a causeway. Tom Holland was filmed here aboard a wooden ship — the footage shot offshore from the castle walls against the Ionian horizon. It is one of the largest medieval fortresses in the Mediterranean and one of the most atmospheric.

Costa Navarino, the luxury resort complex 30 minutes north of Pylos, launched a dedicated ‘Odyssey Season 2026’ programme timed to the film’s July release. The Messinian Odyssey Trail covers six stages — Nestor’s Palace, the Archaeological Museum of Pylos, Voidokilia Beach, Nestor’s Cave, and two additional mythological sites — with guides who connect the Bronze Age archaeology to the Homeric text and the Nolan production. The Westin at Costa Navarino opened 27 February 2026 and carries the centrepiece accommodation for this experience.

Beyond Homer’s Text: Italy, Scotland, and Iceland

The remaining filming countries cover the more mythologically complex episodes of the Odyssey: the island encounters, the underworld, and the years of captivity that kept Odysseus from his return.

Italy: Favignana and the Aeolian Islands. Filming in Sicily began in March 2025 at Favignana, the largest of the Egadi Islands off the northwestern tip of Sicily, which scholars have long associated with the “Goat Island” that precedes Odysseus’s encounter with the Cyclops Polyphème. Matt Damon and Tom Holland were both sighted here during the Cyclops sequences. The Aeolian Islands to the northeast (a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000) served as the mythological Aeolia, the island of Aeolus the wind god. The Draken Harald Hårfagre — the largest working Viking ship in the world, built in Norway in 2012 with 25 pairs of oars — played Odysseus’s vessel throughout the Italian and Scottish sequences, moored at Sicilian harbours between shoots.

Scotland: Findlater Castle and the Moray Coast. Filming ran for approximately 6 weeks from late May to 25 July 2025 on the Moray coast of northeast Scotland, where Findlater Castle served as the island of Circe (and partially Calypso). The castle, whose first historical reference dates to 1246 under King Alexander III, is now a ruin on a 15-metre sea cliff above the Firth of Moray. Temporary structures were built on the cliffs to recreate a Greek ancient world setting. The first trailer released in December 2025 shows soldiers running toward the sea from a clifftop promontory — that is Findlater. Access requires care: the site is unfenced and the ruins are fragile.

Iceland: Snæfellsnes and the Underworld. Twelve days of filming in late June 2025 captured the Hades sequences on the black sand beaches and volcanic terrain of southern Iceland. The primary locations were Landeyjahöfn (where a full-scale ship was constructed for harbour sequences), Hjörleifshöfði (the volcanic mountain), and Snæfellsnes peninsula with its glacier-capped volcano. Nolan has used Iceland’s topography as a palette for the supernatural in three previous films: Batman Begins, Interstellar, and now The Odyssey. The logic is consistent — Iceland’s geology produces landscapes that read as planetary otherness rather than terrestrial scenery.

Malta/Gozo: Calypso’s Cave. Gozo, the smaller island north of Malta, carries a centuries-old tradition of identification with the island of Ogygia where Calypso held Odysseus for seven years. The Calypso’s Cave at the western edge of Ramla Bay is currently closed to the public due to geological movement, but the viewing platform above it offers a panorama over the bay’s red-sand beach that is worth the trip independently. Ramla Bay itself is Gozo’s finest beach, and the Neolithic temples of Ggantija (among the oldest freestanding structures in the world, predating Stonehenge by 500 years) are a 15-minute drive away.

For readers planning a broader tour of epic-scale film location travel in the British Isles, our guide to Game of Thrones tour in Dubrovnik demonstrates how Aït Benhaddou served both productions — making a combined Morocco and Croatia itinerary a coherent set-jetting circuit for fans of both.

When and How to Visit: Practical Planning

The Moroccan circuit and the Greek circuit each function as self-contained 3 to 5-day itineraries. Combining both requires a transatlantic flight between Marrakech and Athens or a connection through Madrid or Paris. The practical parameters for each:

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