Where Was The Odyssey Filmed? A Walker's Guide to the Real Locations

Here at Ramble Worldwide, we've always believed that the best way to understand a place is to walk through it. So when Christopher Nolan's long-awaited adaptation of Homer's Odyssey lands in cinemas tomorrow (17th July 2026), we'll be watching with rather more than a casual interest. The Odyssey, for the uninitiated, is one of the oldest and most enduring stories ever told: the epic journey of Odysseus as he attempts to sail home to Ithaca after the fall of Troy, battling gods, monsters, nymphs and the wrath of Poseidon along the way. It takes him ten years. We'd have suggested a walking holiday, but there you are.

Nolan's film, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus, Tom Holland as his son Telemachus, Zendaya as Athena, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Robert Pattinson as the villainous Antinous, Charlize Theron as Calypso and Lupita Nyong'o in the dual role of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, was filmed across six countries in just 91 days. Here's where the cameras rolled, and why each location was worth the journey.

Our walking holidays: Walking Holidays in Greece

The Odyssey begins and ends in Greece, and Nolan's team spent a lot of time here. The Peloponnese region, that great fist of land jutting into the Mediterranean from the southern mainland, is where much of the epic's action is rooted. It's the world of Nestor, king of Pylos, and the landscape that Telemachus traverses in search of news of his missing father. For the film, the production chose several locations of extraordinary character in this region.

Voidokilia Beach, a near-perfect horseshoe of golden sand backed by dunes and lagoon, doubles as the shores of ancient Pylos, one of the most beautiful and least-touched beaches in the whole of Greece. Nearby, Nestor's Cave provided the setting for one of the Odyssey's most famous episodes: the encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus. It's a suitably dramatic location, the kind of place that makes you feel the myth long before anyone calls action. The 13th-century Methoni Castle, meanwhile, with its isolated rocky promontory jutting into the sea, provided the perfect backdrop for the film's fortified port scenes, a place where the ancient world feels genuinely close at hand.

Our walking holidays: Walking Holidays in Italy

Sicily has always had a strong claim on the Odyssey. Once home to ancient Greek settlers, the island is widely believed to have been the setting for significant portions of the original epic poem: the land of the Cyclops, the home of Scylla and Charybdis, the island of the Sun God's sacred cattle. Nolan's team clearly agreed, choosing Sicily as a key filming location and bringing in the local community in the process.

The island of Favignana, which appears in the trailer, saw locals come together as extras in a way that feels entirely fitting for a story about community, homecoming and belonging. The Bue Marina coastline, with its extraordinary clear water and ancient rock formations, and the Castello di Santa Caterina, perched dramatically above the island, both feature in the film. If Sicily already had a claim on the Odyssey before filming began, it has a stronger one now.

Our walking holidays: Walking Holidays in Malta

Malta's famously turquoise coastline makes it an obvious choice for any film set against the ancient Mediterranean, but there's more to this island's connection with the Odyssey than aesthetics. On the sister island of Gozo, Calypso's Cave looks out across the sea from above one of Malta's most beautiful beaches, and it was named after the very nymph who held Odysseus captive here for seven years in Homer's poem. Whether Nolan used the cave itself or simply drew on the island's Odyssean associations, Malta's place in this story goes back a great deal further than the film.

Our walking holidays: Walking Holidays in Scotland

This is where The Odyssey takes a significant departure from its Mediterranean origins, and a very deliberate one. Scotland's appearance in a film set largely in the ancient Greek world is thought to signal a tonal shift, a move towards the darker, more elemental passages of the poem where the world feels genuinely unknowable. Matt Damon and Tom Holland were spotted filming in Burghead on the Moray coast in 2025, a place of extraordinary atmosphere: an ancient promontory fort site looking out across a grey and restless sea. It's the kind of landscape that needs no special effects to feel like the edge of the known world.

Our walking holidays: Walking Holidays in Iceland

Like Scotland, Iceland is about as far from the wine-dark sea of Homer's imagination as it's possible to get, and that, almost certainly, is precisely why Nolan chose it. Nolan's crew were spotted deep in the Icelandic highlands and along its craggy, volcanic coastline, locations of such raw, otherworldly drama that they need very little help to feel mythological. In a story populated by gods, monsters and supernatural forces, Iceland provides a landscape that seems to operate by its own rules entirely. Few places on earth look quite so much like somewhere the gods might actually live.

Our walking holidays: Walking Holidays in Morocco

For the city of Troy itself, Nolan's team looked to Morocco, and specifically to Aït Benhaddou, the UNESCO World Heritage Site whose extraordinary ksar, a fortified village of layered earthen buildings, dates back to the 11th century and stands as one of the finest examples of ancient urban architecture anywhere in the world. It is, in short, exactly what you'd want Troy to look like: a sprawling, ancient, sun-baked metropolis that feels like it has been standing since the beginning of time.

Essaouira, the wind-lashed Atlantic port whose wave-laden shores have appeared in everything from Game of Thrones to Gladiator, was used to bring to life the rough seas stirred up by Poseidon's wrath, the relentless enemy of Odysseus throughout his ten-year journey home. Marrakech also features, adding its extraordinary layered history and sensory richness to a film that, if the locations are anything to go by, is going to be quite something.

Inspired by the landscapes of The Odyssey? We run walking holidays in Greece, Italy, Malta, Scotland, Iceland and Morocco. Call us on 01707 524 908 or visit rambleworldwide.co.uk to find your next adventure.