The dense forests, twisting rivers and granite peaks of Northern Ireland’s Mourne Mountains have lived many lives and assumed many names.
They’re Westeros in “Game of Thrones.” They’re “Krypton” in the Superman prequel.
They’re additionally Transylvania in “Dracula Untold”, Sherwood in the upcoming “Death of Robin Hood” and the Forgotten Realms in “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.”
As half of the Mourne Gullion Strangford international geopark, this mountain area in Ireland’s northeast achieved UNESCO recognition in 2023, however comparatively small numbers of worldwide guests come to discover.
However, the lyrically named Kingdom of Mourne — it was by no means a sovereign state — has been inspiring imaginations globally for greater than 75 years.
This sea-lapped panorama of 220 sq. miles was the real-life inspiration for “The Chronicles of Narnia,” the enduring Fifties novels by Belfast-born author C.S. Lewis quickly to be revived as soon as once more. They’ll get their fourth movie adaptation in “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” later this 12 months.
Small and compact
While Gerwig’s “Narnia” is being filmed in England, Northern Ireland has a booming native movie trade. Production of Season 1 and a pair of of the brand new “Game of Thrones” prequel, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” is estimated to have returned greater than $80 million to the economic system alone.
“We are a small and very compact country. In fact, we are effectively the size of Greater Los Angeles, but with about 10% of the population,” says Andrew Reid, chief content material officer for Northern Ireland Screen.
Only 1.9 million individuals stay in Northern Ireland, however at anybody time there will likely be 1,200 individuals arduous at work on live-action scripted tasks.
Thanks to good highway infrastructure, crews can head in any route from a manufacturing base in Belfast and rapidly entry a various vary of landscapes — as can the followers and vacationers who come to the area in their wake.
“You can be on a beach in the morning,” and again in Belfast in the afternoon, says Reid, or “up a mountain one day,” after which on a river, lake or in a forest the following.
Soft hills and rolling farmland
The shoreline north of Belfast, with its windswept vistas reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands, has some of Ireland’s most dramatic surroundings, together with the world-famous Giant’s Causeway.
An hour south of Belfast, the Mourne Gullion Strangford international geopark is a softer panorama, with rolling hills and shadowy dells in which it’s simple for the thoughts to conjure up magical beasties.
“I have seen landscapes, notably in the Mourne Mountains and southwards, which under a particular light made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge,” wrote C. S. Lewis in his essay “On Stories.”
He was extra particular in a letter to his brother Warren, writing, “that part of Rostrevor which overlooks Carlingford Lough is my idea of Narnia.”
The Lewis boys spent childhood holidays in Rostrevor, a neat and gaily painted village, now dotted with literary murals, shut to the Northern Irish border.
To its north rise the mountains, richly forested in towering sitka spruce, one of the world’s tallest bushes, and at their ft lie the nonetheless waters of Lewis’s beloved lough, a glacial ford which opens into the Irish Sea.
Lewis wasn’t the primary to dream of giants right here. From the village, you’ll be able to saunter previous the Fairy Glen (reputed hang-out of the “wee folk”) and climb the mountainside to uncover spectacular views and a peculiar 50-ton boulder perched unexpectedly nearly 1,000 ft above sea degree.
The scientific rationalization is that Cloughmore (from the Irish for “big stone”) is a glacial erratic, thought to have originated in Scotland and been deposited right here by retreating ice on the finish of the final Ice Age.
The legendary model is that it was thrown right here from throughout the loch by Finn McCool, the legendary titan who can also be credited with constructing the Giant’s Causeway some 100 miles north.
The Mournes have been shaped by volcanic exercise greater than 50 million years in the past, in tectonic shifts associated to these which shaped the Causeway’s basalt columns earlier than it.
It was then sculpted by successive Ice Ages, which means that the mountains – fittingly for a “Game of Thrones” filming location – are a real “land of fire and ice.”
Santa’s cottage and the ‘magic hill’
North of Rostrevor, in the center of the mountains, Leitrim Lodge has been a frequent filming location, together with because the lands north of Winterfell in Season 2 of “Game of Thrones.” (Winterfell itself is at Castle Ward property, some 30 miles northwest).
It’s additionally the place, explains Reid, C.S. Lewis went on household picnics and entertained his younger cousins with “little stories about dwarf armies and this, that and the other.”
The farmer’s cottage the place Arya and the Hound took refuge in “Game of Thrones” Season 4 is a seven-minute drive away, shut to “Santa’s Cottage,” Ireland’s “official residence” of Santa Claus. Father Christmas’s look in the Narnia books is a seismic occasion, however in this Hilltown attraction it’s a calendar staple, each November and December.
Locals additionally head to the “magic hill” close to Spelga Dam to expertise an intriguing pure phenomenon. An optical phantasm right here creates what is typically known as an electrical brae: A parked automobile with its handbrake off will seem to roll uphill on this quiet facet highway.
During Lewis’s boyhood, the 20-year Mourne Wall constructing undertaking started. This epic 22-mile boundary, constructed to preserve livestock from polluting water provides, was constructed utilizing the basic dry-stone approach that characterises the realm and was accomplished in 1922.
The granite bulwark runs like a seam throughout the peaks and is now a well-liked hiking route taking in seven of the ten highest 600-meter-plus mountains in Northern Ireland.
Unlike the well-known barrier in “Game of Thrones,” nevertheless, there’s no “north of the wall”: This wall runs in a circle.
At 354 meters, Hen Mountain is one of the Mournes’ smaller peaks, however it’s achieved new heights of stardom by showing in the present poster for “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.”
Walking alongside the well-maintained path by the valley on a spring afternoon, the coconut scent of yellow-flowered whin bushes candy in the air, I’ve the entire place to myself. It’s arduous to think about this pristine expanse full of the crowds and clatter of a full-scale HBO manufacturing crew. (HBO is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery, the identical dad or mum firm as NCS).
“We have a strong sustainability element to our work,” says Reid, which implies the mountains are left simply as they’re discovered. “We have to be grateful for and respectful of the work groups and individuals have done for decades to keep the Mournes clean and protected.”
By far the most well-liked filming location in the Mournes, showing in the whole lot from 2025’s “How to Train Your Dragon” to the regrettable medieval stoner comedy “Your Highness,” starring James Franco and Natalie Portman, is Tollymore Forest Park.
It’s not arduous to see why. This enchanting 630-hectare state park is full of stepping stones, 18th-century follies and a complete of 16 bridges throughout the babbling Shimna River.
Above the majestic treeline there are panoramic views of mountain and sea, whereas the Gothic gate arches and intriguing constructions such because the hermitage lend it a Middle Earth really feel.
Tollymore performed a starring position in the very first episode of “Game of Thrones,” which launched 15 years in the past this month in April 2011. This is the place The Starks uncover the useless stag and the orphaned direwolf pups in the woods. It’s additionally the place the Night’s Watch first encountered the White Walkers, in a plot growth that may instruct the entire future of the collection.
Friendly big from ‘Game of Thrones’ rides Northern Ireland’s display tourism wave
A homegrown Irish big of 6 ft 9, actor and tour information Flip Robinson was a physique double in “Game of Thrones” for the character of Hodor, the Stark household servant. Now he runs Giant Tours Ireland, taking clients on “Game of Thrones” location excursions throughout the area.
It’s “quite incredible how screen tourism has really established itself here,” he says. “With ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ coming back here, we were really excited about that.”
Visitors to the Kingdom of Mourne and the Mourne Gullion Strangford Global Geopark will discover an invigorated hospitality scene too.
The seaside village of Dundrum, not too long ago named by The Times as one of the most effective locations to stay in the UK, has a meals scene that belies its inhabitants of 1,500. On the village’s predominant road, The Buck’s Head, helmed by Michelin star chef Alex Greene, has a Stark-worthy identify and top-tier delicacies.
For a extra rustic meal, Downpatrick’s Fodder in the Woods, shut to “Game of Thrones” places equivalent to Inch Abbey,” serves its personal grass-fed Dexter beef burgers inside a woodland tipi.
Charlie Chaplin was a former visitor on the Slieve Donard, a grand Victorian railway lodge in the seafront city of Newcastle, in the shadow of the 850-meter mountain from which it takes its identify.
It’s subsequent to the Royal County Down golf membership, which final 12 months was namechecked in the Seth Rogen comedy collection “The Studio” as “the best golf club in the world.”
Hidden away in the forests of the Enniskeen Estate, only a couple of miles from city, and little identified even to locals, is Ireland’s solely five-star glamping retreat.
The Enniskeen Estate and Forest Spa, subsequent to the Enniskeen Hotel, which has a fading grandeur of its personal, has welcomed A-list friends together with fantasy royalty himself, “A Song of Fire and Ice” creator George R. R. Martin.
On its web site, Hugh Jackman, star of 2026’s “The Death of Robin Hood,” speaks of his “magical” keep: “I will definitely be coming back.”