Netflix's hit thriller series Wednesday is a visual feast of gothic glam, haunting forests, and small-town living. Based on the Addams Family, Netflix's third most-watched show ever—beat only by Squid Game and Stranger Things—follows morose teenager Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) as she matriculates at a brand new school. After getting expelled for an unfortunate incident involving some swimmers and some piranhas, Wednesday is sent to a boarding school for outcasts: Nevermore Academy, a castle sitting in the middle of a forest near the quaint normie town of Jericho, Vermont.
To film the spooky series to the standards set by the iconic Addams characters, the show and its cast traveled abroad to some of the eeriest locales in Europe. With the first episodes of season 2 out now, read on for everything you need to know about the filming locations that brought Wednesday to life.
'Wednesday' Season 1 Filming Locations
The eight-episode first season of Wednesday was filmed primarily in Bucharest, Romania, including 70 sets across six sound stages and various locations around the city. Director Tim Burton, who helmed the first four episodes of the show, said in a press brief, "It was amazing to come here to Romania because it just weirdly fit into the Addams Family world. Trying to make Romania look like Vermont was an interesting challenge, but we felt like we found lots of new locations."
Here are some of the many locations used in the series, courtesy of Netflix Romania:
Nevermore Academy
The stand-in for the exterior of Nevermore Academy was the Cantacuzino Castle, located in Bușteni, Romania, in the Carpathian Mountains. The castle was built in 1911 in the Neo-Romanian style and served as the summer home of Prince Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, former Prime Minister of Romania, until the 1930s. After World War II, it was owned by the country's Ministry of Internal Affairs, and eventually it was restored and opened to the public.
For anyone hoping to visit, the castle has daily visiting hours, so tourists can see the interior, its art gallery, and an adjacent sculpture garden.
The castle was not used for the interiors of Nevermore, but the production found other Romanian landmarks to give the school its Gothic aesthetic. Some of the historic buildings used for the interior include Palatul Monteoru and Casa Niculescu-Dorobantu, both located in Bucharest.
The academy's gorgeous greenhouse will also require a separate trip. Those scenes were filmed in the Gradina Botanica Dimitrie Brândza, or the Bucharest Botanical Garden. The garden, established in 1860 and named after its founder, Dimitrie Brândza, is located in the Cotroceni neighborhood of the city and covers nearly 45 acres.
Jericho
While there is a real-life Jericho, Vermont, the entire town featured in Wednesday was built for the show at Bucharest Film Studios, also known as Buftea Studios. That includes the town square, Pilgrim World, and the sheriff's house. In addition to the sets, more locations were used for exteriors near Nevermore. For example, the train station scenes were filmed at Gara Regala, the station of the mountain town Sinaia in the Bușteni region. As for those gorgeous lake scenes, the Poe Cup was filmed across two lakes in Romania called Brănești and Sterbei.
'Wednesday' Season 2 Filming Locations
For season 2, the Netflix hit moved its sets from one side of Europe to another, trading Romania for the shores of Ireland. Thanks in part to a large tax credit, Wednesday season 2 became the largest TV production ever hosted in the country. Filming took place in the second half of 2024, across Dublin and the nearby counties Wicklow and Offaly.
Co-showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar called the country "truly magical," while speaking with Tudum. "It adds a sense of timeless beauty, wonder, and epic spectacle to the world of Wednesday. It’s no coincidence that Dracula author Bram Stoker hailed from Dublin, and his stories were inspired by the stories of Irish folklore."
Nevermore Academy
While Nevermore's outer facade is still an augmented Cantacuzino Castle, some exterior and corridor scenes for Wednesday season 2 were filmed at Charleville Castle, according to House Beautiful. The neo-Gothic estate was first built in 1798, and is located near the town of Tullamore in County Offaly, an hour west of Dublin.
According to its website, the volunteer-run estate has been booked for filming projects throughout the summer, but should be open to the public for guided tours later in the year. Other projects that have been filmed at Charleville include Becoming Jane, Northanger Abbey, and The Green Knight.
PEOPLE also reported that season 2 utilized Ashford Studios in County Wicklow as its central production hub. To prepare for the global hit, the facility added 170,000 square feet of new space for filming.
The Surrounding Area
Other filming locations throughout Ireland include the towns of Kilternan, Clonliffe, and Roundwood. Certain scenes were filmed on the campus of Trinity College Dublin; the college's business school was transformed to stand in for Newark Airport, and the building was open to students and staff during filming, per Time Out. Another school, Holy Cross College (a.k.a. Clonliffe College), stood in for the psychiatric facility Willow Hill.
Meanwhile, some outdoor scenes, including Camp Jericho, were filmed at Powerscourt Demesne, an estate in County Wicklow with 47 acres of gardens and one of Ireland's tallest waterfalls. Another famous filming location is Dean’s Grange Cemetery, where many of Grandmama's (Joanna Lumley) scenes are filmed. One of the largest cemeteries in Dublin, Dean's Grange is the resting place of several Irish celebrities, including Joseph Campbell and Sinéad O' Connor.
