If you’ve ever fancied visiting the locations from Game of Thrones, you aren’t alone. Ireland is home to four of the most Instagrammed locations used to film George RR Martin’s fable, making it the most popular country in a study by Irish online casino Slotbox. Three locations from Spain made the list, while Iceland’s Kirkjufell topped the poll with 86,616 hashtags.
The Kirkjufell mountain was the backdrop for the Beyond the Wall scenes in Thrones.
The Dark Hedges on the Bregagh Road (above) – the backdrop for the King’s Road – had 70,297 tags, Dunluce Castle/House Greyjoy had 38,862 tags, Castle Ward (Winterfell), with 18,093 and Tollymore Forest (Forest of Winterfell), 18,003, complete the Irish locations. The Dark Hedges’ rows of beech trees were planted in the 18th century by James Stuart.
It seems the release of House of Dragons reignited people’s passion for the show, as Google searches for Game of Thrones filming locations are up by 153 per cent globally in the last year. Using hashtag data from Instagram, Slotbox analyzed 40 filming locations from both the HBO-originated series, to find out how many photos were taken at each location.
Desert
After Kirkjufell was Bardenas Reales Nature Reserve in Northern Spain with 80,601 hashtags. The desert landscape was used in season six, doubling for the Dothraki sea. Other popular Spanish locations include the Alcázar de Sevilla (39,031 hashtags), used as the location for The Water Palaces of Dorne in season five, and Roman Bridge in Corboda (26,975 hashtags).
The bridge was used in season five to portray the Long Bridge in the Free City of Volantis. Just a 15-minute ferry ride from Dubrovnik in Croatia is the tiny island of Lokrum, which attracted 76,956 hashtags on Instagram. The botanical gardens were used in filming for Qarth garden scenes when Daenerys and her entourage attended a garden party in season two.
The study used hashtag data from Instagram to reveal the most and least photographed places from a comprehensive list of 35 locations used in the filming of Game of Thrones and House of Dragons. Where the location had more than one name, for instance Spain’s La Plaza de Toros, also referred to as Osuna Bull Ring, the number of hashtags were combined.
