Posted on
February 10, 2025
in
Trip Ideas
Sure, Hollywood knows all about attraction and romance--but its players are also experts on romantic tourist attractions. The history of the silver screen is full of passionate scenes set at locations--from the conventional to the quirky--around the world.
Here, IgoUgo members recommend 12 of those star locations for some Hollywood-inspired romance.
Photo by NiceGinna
The café that served Bogart and Bergman may have set up shop on a Hollywood lot, but this homage “invokes the Casablanca that you imagined,” says NiceGinna, in a “beautiful 1930s mansion built into the walls of the Old Medina.”
Photo by tartlette
“Remember Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck there in Roman Holiday?” Mary Louisa asks. Just like in the film, she says, “street vendors sell their baubles and families lounge on the steps among beautiful flowers.”
Photo by krareman
“What a pleasant surprise,” says Sandra Fuss, that Tiffany is more than a tourist attraction--it's a pleasant place to spend some time. It sounds like Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany's fame was right.
Photo by BawBaw
Reason #10,001 to stroll in Central Park: it stars, as movie buff wanderer 2005 notes, in many famous movie scenes, including the one filled with memorable banter between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in 1977’s Annie Hall.
Photo by wanderer 2005
As travel2000 says, “Katz's is a New York institution made even more famous by the scene with Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.” Whether you have “what she’s having” or order on your own, wanderer 2005 promises you’ll be “so full, you won’t need to eat dinner ever again.”
Photo by ak1
Rodeo Drive is a must for “anyone who has seen and loved the movie Pretty Woman,” says cr008k, and VickiFunes advises fans to stop in the adjacent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, “used extensively in the film.”
Photo by JaySeb
If either An Affair to Remember or Sleepless in Seattle is one of your favorite rom coms, Blackmore suggests ascending the Empire State Building at night: “the view is more romantic than during the day, full of nighttime sparkle.” Issues convincing your significant other? BostonChick says to tell him or her to “picture King Kong plummeting to his end” instead of picturing Tom and Meg.
Photo by Laalasa
Follow in Hugh Grant’s and Julia Roberts’ footsteps at Portobello Road Market and Blenheim Crescent, where you’ll find the travel bookstore that inspired Grant’s character’s shop in the movie Notting Hill. Alas, says Jenn966, the real version is “smaller, less dusty, and Hugh Grant-less.”
Photo by dkm1981
One of the cornerstones of the Montmartre of Amélie and Nino in Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, the café where Amélie worked is a “fabulous restaurant and bar with plenty of atmosphere and real Parisian charm” where, Sabina315 tells us, even the receipts say, “Amélie thanks you.”
Photo by isewell
Antoni Gaudi’s “exuberant” art park sets the scene for romance in movies like L’Auberge Espagnole and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, though pabrams52 felt like she’d stepped into a different movie by “entering another world à la The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."
Photo by michaelhudson
Cat19 admits that Lost in Translation prompted her to reserve a room here, and while she found the hotel to be pretentious, Tokyo resident Asada says it’s “worth the dough”--once.
Photo by John G. Wilbanks
Forks and its Olympic National Park neighbor Port Angeles are the playgrounds/battlegrounds of Twilight’s Edward and Bella, and real-life travelers are in hot pursuit. Don’t miss dinner at Bella Italia, an “oasis of culture after a day in the wilderness” and the place where Edward and Bella had their first date.
If you have another favorite attraction made famous in a romantic film, tell us in the comments section!