Where Was 'Alice Through The Looking Glass’ Filmed? Victorian London Looks Amazing

While most fans of Alice Through the Looking Glass are probably goggling at the fantastical world of Underland, that's not the only setting worthy of attention. The movie begins with Alice out in the real world, serving as a ship's captain, then a "hysteria" patient, in Victorian London, leaving fans wondering where Alice Through The Looking Glass was filmed. While the Underland scenes were, of course, filmed in a studio, the "real world" at the beginning of the movie was actually real.

The BBC was on scene at the Gloucester Docks, which were turned into London for a day back in 2014, with the help of four tall ships: the Excelsior, Irene, Kathleen & May, and Earl of Pembroke. Filmmakers also used fog. So, so much fog. The historic location was easy to transform; the docks have been in operation since the early 1800s, and the original warehouses still stand there today, although they're now home to a museum, an antiques shop, and various cafés. The buildings reportedly needed very little disguising, as they're not littered with satellite dishes, antennas, and other modern trappings that would have given them away as a 2016 shopping plaza. Not much has visibly changed at the docks in the last 200 years, at least not on the outside.

This isn't Gloucester's first foray into film, either. The 2006 film Amazing Grace was also shot at the docks, and the Gloucester Cathedral, built at the end of the 14th century, stood in for various corridors and bathrooms at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in three separate Harry Potter films (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). British television shows such as Sherlock and Dr. Who have also filmed in the area.

Additional scenes were reportedly shot at Horsley Park in Surrey, a Victorian mansion built in 1834 that's now home to a hotel and event venue. Interestingly enough, it was actually a very appropriate place to film: author Lewis Carroll purchased a home for his unmarried sisters in the nearby town of Guildford three years after publishing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and often visited the home, called The Chestnuts. In fact, Carroll died there in 1898, according to the BBC. It was during an 1871 visit to The Chestnuts that Carroll wrote Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Now, over 140 years later, the story's come home.