The lobby of the Grand Budapest — the pink and red atrium with the balconies, the lift and the concierge desk — is the interior of the Görlitzer Warenhaus, a disused Art Nouveau department store in Görlitz, the easternmost town in Germany, on the river Neisse directly opposite Poland.
The building had closed as a shop in 2009 and was standing empty when Wes Anderson's production arrived in 2013 and dressed the atrium as a hotel. The exterior of the hotel, meanwhile, was never a building at all: it is a miniature model, built and shot as a model, which is why it looks the way it does.
The Warenhaus
The Görlitzer Warenhaus opened in 1913, a full-blown Jugendstil department store with a central light well rising through the floors under a glass roof, galleried balconies on each level, and a grand staircase. It is exactly the kind of building that stopped being built after the First World War.
It survived the twentieth century in unusual condition. Görlitz was almost entirely undamaged by wartime bombing, and then spent forty years in the German Democratic Republic, where the absence of redevelopment money preserved a great deal that would have been demolished in the West. The store traded on through the GDR period and after reunification, and closed in 2009.
Anderson's team used the atrium essentially as found, adding the colour scheme, the desk and the fittings. Since the film the building has changed hands more than once amid repeated plans to reopen it, and its public access has come and gone — it has at times been open for exhibitions and tours, and at other times entirely closed. Check before you travel; do not assume you can walk in.
Görliwood
Görlitz has roughly 4,000 listed buildings across Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Jugendstil and Gründerzeit periods, in an almost uninterrupted historic centre. For a production designer this is a town-sized backlot, and the local nickname Görliwood is well earned.
Inglourious Basterds, The Reader, The Book Thief, Around the World in 80 Days and In the Fade all shot there, among many others. The town runs film-location walking routes, and unlike most such trails the buildings are genuinely all within a few minutes of each other.
The Grand Budapest production also used other locations in and around Görlitz and Saxony: the Zwinger palace complex in Dresden, Schloss Waldenburg, and various interiors dressed across the region.
The hotel that is nine feet tall
The exterior of the Grand Budapest — the pink façade on the mountainside, with the funicular running up to it — is a miniature. Anderson had the model built and photographed it as a model, with painted backdrops and, in places, deliberately visible artifice.
That is a choice, not a budget constraint. The film's framing device puts the story at several removes of narration, and a hotel that looks slightly like a beautiful toy supports the idea that the whole thing is a story being retold. The funicular, the cable car and the mountain observatory in the film are all miniatures too.
So there is no Grand Budapest Hotel building to visit anywhere. There is a lobby, in a department store, in Saxony.
Visiting the location
- Where
- Görlitzer Warenhaus, An der Frauenkirche 5–7, Görlitz, Saxony, Germany. The town centre is on the German bank of the Neisse, with Zgorzelec in Poland across the bridge.
- Getting there
- Direct trains from Dresden take around 1 hour 20 minutes; Görlitz is also reachable from Berlin in roughly three hours. Wrocław in Poland is about 1 hour 45 by road.
- Access
- The town centre is free to walk. Access to the Warenhaus interior has varied considerably since the film depending on ownership and works — verify current status before making a special trip for it.
- Check the Warenhaus's current access situation before travelling. It has been open, closed and open again since 2014.
- Walk across the Altstadtbrücke into Zgorzelec. The two towns were one until 1945 and the crossing is a two-minute walk.
- The tourist office publishes film-location routes covering Görliwood generally, not just this film.
- Combine it with Dresden — the Zwinger, also used by the production, is 80 minutes away by train.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Grand Budapest Hotel a real hotel?
No. The exterior was a miniature model built for the film. The lobby interior was created inside the disused Görlitzer Warenhaus department store in Görlitz, Germany.
Can you visit the Grand Budapest Hotel lobby?
Sometimes. The Warenhaus has opened and closed repeatedly since the film under changing ownership and renovation plans, so check the current position before travelling specifically for it.
Why is Görlitz called Görliwood?
It has around 4,000 listed buildings in a historic centre that escaped both wartime bombing and post-war redevelopment, making it a heavily used film location — Inglourious Basterds, The Reader and The Book Thief among many.
Where else was The Grand Budapest Hotel filmed?
Elsewhere in Görlitz and Saxony, including the Zwinger in Dresden and Schloss Waldenburg, with the hotel exterior, funicular and observatory all realised as miniatures.