Lights! Camera! Prague! - Prague Film Map
This year, just in time for the opening of the summer tourist season, Czech Film Commission, in collaboration with Prague City Hall, published a “film map” of Prague, identifying the locations of scenes from big foreign films shot in the capital.
It is quite possible that the most famous of all will remain Forman’s Amadeus, shot in historical Prague locations in the early 1980s. But it was not until 1995 that Prague really took off as a major film city. That was the year Tom Cruise and director Brian De Palma descended on the city to film the international blockbuster Mission: Impossible, cementing Prague’s reputation as a world-class film capital.
Besides that film, Prague has lent the suggestiveness of Cold-War skullduggery to other cloak-and-dagger thrillers. It was in Prague that Daniel Craig became the new James Bond in Casino Royale. Matt Damon introduced the Jason Bourne trilogy with The Bourne Identity. And Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy kept the action rolling with Wanted.
The city’s dark side has made it a star in many chillers. Johnny Depp pursued Jack The Ripper here in From Hell. Wesley Snipes battled vampires in Blade II. And Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles reared the spawn of Satan in The Omen.
Directors have also used Prague for historical settings and as a stand-in for other European cities. In La Môme and Faubourg 36 for example, Prague became the Paris of the first half of the 20th century. In The Illusionist, it served as turn-of-the-century Vienna, and in Shanghai Knights as Victorian London.
Using this map as a guide, visitors to Prague can find the locations of some of their favorite movie scenes and retrace the steps of the stars.
