Style & Culture

Where is 'Killing Eve' filmed?

Well, she's back. BAFTA-winning spy thriller Killing Eve returns for a third series, and that means more double-crossing and intrigue, more delicious one-liners and more unsung corners of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Executive producer Lee Morris takes us through season 3s prime locations – and keep scrolling down to revisit destination highlights from seasons 1 and 2, too
Where is Killing Eve filmed | Inside the reallife locations
BBC Pictures

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The BAFTA-winning spy thriller Killing Eve returns for a third series – with a fourth season already in the pipeline, scripted by Sex Education's Laura Neal – which takes our Russian anti-hero to Barcelona and Romania, among other European locations, and puts her in a sinister clown costume. Here we stake out the three seasons' prime locations.

BBC Pictures

Season Three

We’ve had Paris, Amsterdam and Rome, so naturally for Season 3, everyone’s favourite TV serial killer is in Barcelona. That’s where we find Villanelle (Jodie Comer) when she returns to our screens and she’s on decidedly dramatic form. First and foremost, we see her in a magnificent apartment, La Casa Ramos on Plaça de Lesseps.

Built in 1907 in the Modernist style, a uniquely Catalan movement, it’s as grand and grandiose as Villanelle herself. It's also available to rent on Airbnb.

Then Villanelle is out in the streets of the Gothic Quarter, including Carrer de la Pescateria and (disguised as 'Girona') Carrer d’en Mònec. Later, she’s in a café in Plaça de la Barceloneta with an old friend from her past, Dasha (Harriet Walter), and with a more familiar acquaintance in the cable car over the city’s Port.

The action also takes us east to 'Poland', actually shot in the Romanian village of Viscri, which particularly took Sandra Oh’s fancy. 'It’s a UNESCO Heritage site which Prince Charles helped set up and they actually have a residence there,' she told the BBC website. 'I would walk to set, down the street and go through Prince Charles’ house because our production office was there.' Also in Romania, we see Konstantin take in the National Heroes Memorial in Bucharest’s Carol Park.

BBC Pictures

And of course there’s the more down-to-earth UK settings, which include a great London pub, The Clapton Hart in Hackney, where Eve attends a wake, and the town of New Malden, where she finds work among the Korean community – 'I honestly had no idea that the largest Korean population in Europe is in New Malden,' she told the BBC. 'That’s a bit of a giveaway but it was very exciting for me to be closer to Korean food.' It’s actually at real-life Han, on the High Street – a great example of how, more than ever before, Season 3 ramps up Killing Eve’s use of the dusty everyday and the dramatically different.

Season Two

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    As before, this is a show that’s unusually honest about its settings. While most productions are happy to film Paris in Budapest or dummy three different European capitals in one Belgian town, Killing Eve is almost always where it says it is. There’s good reason for this, according to executive producer Lee Morris, who’s also worked on location-heavy shows including The Durrells, Da Vinci’s Demons and SS-GB. 'With period films, it’s often impossible to shoot in the actual locations as they’ve changed so much,' he tells us. 'With Killing Eve, as it’s contemporary, we have no such excuse. We also know that audiences are savvy, they know when we’re faking it. So we turn filming convention on its head. In our world, we need a good reason not to go to the actual place. When it says Paris, we are in Paris.'

    We are indeed in Paris when we rejoin Eve (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer) – in fact, we’re exactly where we left them at the end of Season 1, in Villanelle’s apartment. (Though Season 1 implied this was in the central 6th arrondissement, it is in fact, according to Morris, 'tucked away in a side street in the north-east'.) From there, we next see Eve heading for the Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar back to London – though this is another slight cheat. It is in fact the Gare de l’Est, just around the corner: 'It’s quieter, though still large,' explains Morris. 'The French railway authorities were very helpful to us. They allowed us to hire a train and platform for a day. We also shot in a lovely exterior bar area on the first floor mezzanine: this is the scene where Eve is so anxious, after stabbing Villanelle, that she gets mistaken for a junkie.'

  • Villanelle, meanwhile, is engaging in some typically extreme behaviour, attempting to flag down a car to take her to hospital and then, when no one will stop, throwing herself at a taxi. 'This was tricky to achieve,' says Morris. 'We wanted a street that said "busy central Paris" but it also needed to be controllable. For a stunt like that, you have to be able to shut the road for safety reasons. We found a quiet street, Rue César Franck, in the 7th arrondissement. It’s quite wide but it’s one-way and it was easy to divert traffic. It’s amazingly central with a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in the background. We then shot the taxi travelling past the Ecole Militaire, another fine building.'

    By Episode 2, we’re back in London, but it’s all change there too. Eve is taken to a new office by Carolyn (the brilliant Fiona Shaw) – which is in fact the old Central St Martin’s art school (aka The College, Holborn), in Southampton Row in the West End, seen on screen in The Imitation Game (2014), Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) and Luther – 'It must currently be the most used location in London,' remarks Morris, 'and our production office was in the same building.' We see it throughout the season, with much swishing along wood-panelled corridors and Eve engaged in a plot-central conversation with Kenny (Sean Delaney) by the staircase with its marble pillars.

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    We also swing round other parts of London and, as in Season 1, the team have worked hard to find new views: 'Part of the house style of the show is not to shoot in too many "obvious" landmark locations,' says Morris. 'We want the viewer to feel like they’re experiencing the real place, so you’re unlikely to find us on the London Eye.' So we see Carolyn’s house ('in Holland Park but we can’t say any more than that'), then the modern glass and concrete of Acland Burghley school in North London, used for the workplace of Eve’s husband Niko (Owen McDonnell).

    Later, before staging a difficult encounter outside Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera, Villanelle engages with a living statue outside Tate Modern before walking along the river, Eve and Carolyn have an unconventional breakfast at Moroccan restaurant Momo in Heddon Street, off Charing Cross Road, and Eve listens in to Villanelle from a café on Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury – actually the Observatory photo gallery, next door to legendary bookshop Gay’s The Word. A highlight, though, is Carolyn’s meeting with psychologist Martin (Adeel Akhtar) among the shelves of The London Library, a 19th-century private institution in St James’s Square and a 'brilliant location', according to Morris.

    Villanelle is also on her travels, this time to Amsterdam for Episode 4. It’s no surprise to see her in the Red Light district, though once again there’s a little sleight of hand here, with scenes shot in neighbouring Koningstraat with some set-dressing. We also see her on the bridge over the canal on Herengracht, and outside the Café de Belhamel by Brouwersgracht. This last location proved handy when the weather changed, as Morris explains. 'The crew were based inside the main café for the afternoon,' he says. 'We were then due to shoot another scene but the weather suddenly closed in – it was unbelievable that anyone would be outside having a meal in those conditions. Fortunately, the café has a fabulous Art Nouveau bar at the back and the scene was quickly relocated indoors. Although, we were no longer enjoying the backdrop of Amsterdam, it’s a glorious location.'

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    They took advantage of all aspects of the city, including its nightlife, in the shape of the through-the-floor entrance to nightclub Shelter in Overhoeksplein, at the foot of the A’Dam Tower: 'It literally appears from the tarmac – all very surreal and ideal for a sequence involving Villanelle'. By contrast, they also got permission to shoot in the Rijksmuseum on Museumstraat, where Villanelle is shaken out of her usual boredom by the gory 17th-century glory of The Corpses of the De Witt Brothers by Jan de Baen. 'We were allowed in to the museum as soon as it closed for the day and shot well into the evening, a complete treat,' says Morris. 'I remember saying we would have to shoot during daylight as it would be impossible to "light" such a large space. It was then pointed out to me that the light from the skylights was completely artificial and controlled by iPad.'

    This being Killing Eve, the end of the season treats us to another of Europe’s jewels, Rome. Here Eve, Villanelle and pretty much everyone they know gather for a suitably riotous climax, winding up in the exquisite surroundings of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli. In this 2nd-century memorial to Roman splendour, they emerge in the spectacular ruins of the Maritime Theatre; though this was in fact an imperial retreat rather than a place of performance, it’s a fitting place for us to bid farewell to the stars of this epic drama.

    'Killing Eve' Season 2 starts on Saturday 8 June 2019 at 9.15pm on BBC ONE, after which all eight episodes will be available to stream on iPlayer.

    Season One

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    Much of Killing Eve season 1 was shot on location as well, starting with Paris, home to assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer, last seen in Doctor Foster). Her apartment is placed in the ever-chic and pricey 6th arrondissement. Though the interior was rebuilt in a London studio, we see her walking in off Rue Guénégaud and Rue Mazarine into a classic courtyard block. Later she confronts her handler Konstantin (Kim Bodnia, of The Bridge fame) among the 18th-century galleries of Place Vendôme (pictured above), but otherwise we only see her on the streets or the Metro.

  • Sid Gentle Films/Robert Viglasky

    For London, home to her MI5 pursuer Eve (Sandra Oh, star of Grey’s Anatomy), the locations are like a tour of the capital’s quirkiest hidden gems. Her grubby office is placed in Warwick House Street, a forgettable side street around the corner from Trafalgar Square, where the sight of Nelson’s Column gives a perfect hiding-in-plain-sight frisson. When she leaves the office, we move to Guy’s Hospital in Southwark, where the warped-metal siding of its modern-art ‘Boiler Suit’ contrasts with the checker-paved 19th-century cloister of the Counting House block.

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    Eve meets her husband in the Mildmay Club, a wood-panelled working mens’ club in Stoke Newington (as seen in Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle series), and joins up with colleagues in a pub that crosses the exterior of The Albert in Victoria Street, a Grade-II-listed Victorian survivor, with the dark-wood interior of The Old Nick in Sandland Street. More all-English atmosphere is provided by Episode 4’s countryside chase that takes in the picturebook Buckinghamshire village of Turville (pictured above) and the Chiltern Hills around Ivinghoe Beacon (pictured below).

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    The most striking UK location, though, is a stand-in for Moscow. Hornsey Town Hall in Crouch End, a beautifully preserved 1930s modernist trailblazer, was used for the lobby, rooms and restaurant of the down-at-heel Hotel Atlasov, where Eve and her boss Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) stay as they close in on Villanelle. The town hall is no stranger to location scouts, having also appeared in Spooks, The Hour and The Crown, and played itself in Bohemian Rhapsody – Freddie Mercury and Queen played their first gig here. Other scenes set in Russia were filmed in Romania, where the production took advantage of the country’s relative unfamiliarity. Memorable in very different ways are the dystopian Brutalist blocks of Giurgiu Prison (interiors were shot closer to home at the disused Reading Gaol, of Oscar Wilde fame) and the elegant curving balconies of the lecture hall at the Politehnica University of Bucharest, where Eve tracks down one of Villanelle’s past associates. Also appearing is landmark neoclassical concert hall the Romanian Athenaeum, converted into a café, and a perfectly isolated white villa on the edge of Lake Snagov, north of Bucharest, as Konstantin’s home.

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    The series also takes us to Berlin, where street scenes were filmed around the Bode Museum (pictured above) by the River Spree and near Friedrichstrasse Station (though the nightclub we see is London’s Fabric), and in the first episode to Italy, where Villanelle tears through the Tuscan countryside on a motorbike. It’s also here that we first see Villanelle, eating ice cream while making faces at a little girl. That’s the Bar Garibaldi in the village of Colle di Val d’Elsa, northwest of Siena – though in this case the onscreen credit tells us we’re in Vienna. In the world of international espionage, you just can’t trust anyone.

    Killing Eve begins on BBC One on 15 September 2018 and is then available as a boxset on BBC iPlayer

  • Sid Gentle Films/Robert Viglasky

    Jodie Comer as Villanelle in Italy

  • Jodie Comer

  • Sid Gentle Films/Robert Viglasky

    Co-stars Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh playing fictional enemies Villanelle and Eve

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    Villanelle wearing a Burberry dress in a scene in Italy

  • Sid Gentle Films/Robert Viglasky

    Sandra Oh

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    Inside the Bode Museum

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    Fabric Nightclub, London

TopicsStyle & CultureOn locationEuropeArt & Culture