Audio Guide: Game of Thrones Film Sites in Girona (Self Guided), Girona

Let’s do a visualization exercise: Girona’s medieval quarter, with its stone staircases and cloistered courtyards, suddenly posing as Westeros. Between 2011 and 2019, HBO’s Game of Thrones roamed Europe in search of backdrops, and Girona ticked all the boxes-Romanesque towers, Gothic facades, and narrow alleys that looked like they’d been waiting centuries for a camera crew. The city didn’t need elaborate sets; its old stones already made the best framework, which is why when Season 6 rolled around, Girona slipped so seamlessly into costume as Braavos, Oldtown, and King’s Landing. For locals, it was a few hectic weeks of filming. For the rest of the world, it was the moment Girona gained a new role on the global stage.

Take the cathedral steps. To locals, they’ve long been a dramatic climb to Girona’s grandest church. To millions of viewers, though, they’re forever tied to Cersei Lannister’s infamous walk of atonement. The staircase, with its monumental sweep and Baroque front, needed almost no digital makeup to become the Great Sept of Baelor-it was ready for its close-up. A short stroll away, the 12th-century cloister of Saint Peter of Galligants joined the cast too, doubling as the Citadel of Oldtown. Its arcades and capitals supplied just the right scholarly grandeur for Samwell Tarly’s new academic home.

The old quarter, compact and walkable, makes it easy to retrace Arya or Cersei’s steps in a morning. Yet the charm of Girona is how the fiction never overwhelms the reality. After following a trail of filming sites, you can sit by the Onyar River with its famous colored houses, or wander beneath the arcades of Freedom Boulevard, realizing that the city doesn’t need CGI to feel magical.

So if you’re wandering Girona, let yourself play both roles: the fan spotting screen moments, and the traveler soaking up centuries of Catalan history. Few cities let you time-travel and binge-watch with your own two feet.