Where was The Grand Budapest Hotel filmed?

With its candy-coloured palette, doll's-house symmetry and storybook charm, this caper conjured an entire imaginary Europe so seductive that fans went looking for the real bricks behind it. The made-up republic of Zubrowka feels like a place out of time, yet much of it was assembled in a single, very real German city, whose preserved streets needed barely a touch of make-believe.

That city is Görlitz, on Germany's eastern edge. The film's centrepiece, the lobby of the famous pink hotel, was created inside the Görlitzer Warenhaus, a grand Art Nouveau department store whose soaring glass-roofed atrium and sweeping staircase were dressed into the hotel's heart. The building's faded early-twentieth-century grandeur is exactly the kind of real-world canvas the production sought out.

For set-jetters, Görlitz is a quietly rewarding destination in its own right, an unusually intact old town that has stood in for many period films. Wander its lanes to spot the textures the camera loved, then use the city as a stepping stone, it sits right on the border with Poland, where its twin town of Zgorzelec lies just across the river. Pair it with a wider tour of eastern Germany for a trip rich in atmosphere.