Where was Downton Abbey filmed?

Few period dramas have turned a single great house into a destination quite the way Downton Abbey has. Across its run, the upstairs-downstairs world of an English aristocratic family became shorthand for a vanished way of life, and fans soon discovered that the estate at its heart is not a studio fiction but a house you can actually walk into.

That house is Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the honey-stoned mansion whose saloon, library and bedrooms serve as the family's real interiors throughout the series, set in its own sweeping grounds. The village scenes, meanwhile, were filmed in Bampton, a quiet hamlet in the Cotswolds, where the church and former grammar school stood in for the cottage hospital and the lanes the family walks through.

For set-jetters, the two locations make a natural pairing. Highclere in Hampshire opens to visitors on selected dates, so book ahead, and Bampton sits within easy reach of classic Cotswolds towns, letting you fold a day of golden-stone villages around your pilgrimage to the real Downton.