Recreating Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle on screen is no small feat. But luckily for the creators of The Crown, there are plenty of grand houses across the UK to choose from. “We pick locations because they look incredibly regal,” Pat Karam, the Netflix drama’s supervising location manager, tells Vogue. “There’s an awful lot of research that goes into making [the sets] look as accurate as possible.”
Many of these locations are open to the public, meaning that fans of the award-winning series can get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of where it is filmed. And, as an added bonus, you’ll avoid the crowds at the real-life royal landmarks. Ahead of season three’s premiere on November 17 when Olivia Colman succeeds Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II, Vogue rounds up eight locations from The Crown that you can actually visit.
1. Wilton House, Wiltshire
Home to the Earl and Countess of Pembroke, Wilton House was used to recreate the lavish interiors of Buckingham Palace in season one, two and three of The Crown. As well as its 17th-century drawing rooms, its impressive art collection—which includes Rembrandt and van Dyck—also makes the Palladian-style home well worth a visit.
2. Lancaster House, London
Also used for Buckingham Palace in all three seasons of The Crown to date, this 19th-century former royal residence on Pall Mall is no stranger to the world of TV and film: it has featured in The Young Victoria (2009) and The King’s Speech (2010), among others. The mansion, which is a stone’s throw away from the Queen’s real-life London residence, has open days throughout 2020.
3. Hylands House, Essex
The real White House might be 3,600 miles away but Hylands House, with its stately exterior, was used as a stand-in for season three of The Crown to show Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) and her husband, Lord Snowdon (Ben Daniels), meeting President Lyndon B. Johnson in Washington in 1965. The Grade II*-listed neoclassical building has restored period rooms from both the Georgian and Victorian eras and is open to the public on select days of the year.
4. Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire
The interiors of Belvoir (pronounced Beaver) Castle feature in the second and third series of The Crown as Windsor Castle. In reality, the site dates back to the 11th century and the castle has been the ancestral home of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland since the 16th century. It has been used as the filming location for several TV programmes and movies, including The Da Vinci Code (2006).
5. Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire
In 1965, Winston Churchill’s (John Lithgow) funeral took place in St Paul’s Cathedral, London—however, Winchester Cathedral was a much more practical filming location to stage the historical event in series three of The Crown. Fittingly for the Netflix series, the Gothic cathedral—one of the largest in Europe—has long had close ties with royalty, playing host to several royal weddings including Queen Mary and Prince Philip of Spain in 1554, and King Henry IV and Joanna of Navarre in 1403. These days, however, the cathedral is mostly associated with writer Jane Austen, who was buried on the site in 1817.
6. Caernarfon Castle, Gwynedd
Sometimes the real-life location can also double up as the film set, as was the case with Caernarfon Castle in north-west Wales. In 1969, the site was used for Prince Charles’ investiture ceremony, where the royal was presented with the insignia of his rank in accordance to his title, the Prince of Wales. In series three of The Crown, the moment is recreated using the same location as the heir apparent (Josh O’Connor) takes part in the ceremony with his mother, Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman). Today, the 11th-century UNESCO World Heritage Site is recognised around the world as one of the greatest buildings from the Middle Ages.
7. Ardverikie Estate, Inverness-shire
Up in the Scottish Highlands, Ardverikie Estate has been the backdrop for Balmoral Castle—the Queen’s Scottish residence—in seasons one and two of The Crown. Balmoral has been owned by the British royal family since 1852 when it was privately purchased by Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. To this day, it is their private property and not part of the Crown. Meanwhile, Ardverikie Estate—a 19th-century house made famous in the BBC series Monarch of the Glen—is the perfect alternative to the royal estate; its Scottish baronial architectural features, including its château-inspired ‘pepper pot’ turrets, make it just as regal as the real thing.
8. Audley End House, Essex
To portray the interiors of Balmoral Castle in season three, The Crown’s location team opted for Audley End House, a 17th-century mansion known as a “palace in all but name”—and originally built to the scale of one. These days, Audley End is a third of its original size, but the still-impressive Jacobean building is home to a huge collection of artwork that includes paintings by Canaletto and Giovanni Battista Cipriani. The great hall and library were previously used for interior shots of Windsor Castle and Eton in series one and two of The Crown, while the gardens have been used for the British TV staple, Antiques Roadshow. The English Heritage site is open to the public and is especially enchanting throughout December when its grounds are illuminated with a colourful light show.
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