Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey reached cinemas on 16 July 2026, and audiences walking out of IMAX screenings around the world are asking the same question: where on earth was that filmed? Indeed, for a good part of the answer, look to Sicily. The island and its smaller archipelagos supplied the visual backbone of Homer’s world. They stand in for Ithaca, for the wandering sea and for the wild coastlines Odysseus spent ten years trying to leave behind. These are the Odyssey filming locations in Sicily, what was shot where, and how to visit them yourself.
Naturally, Nolan famously works without green screens. Indeed, he and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot the film on new 70mm IMAX film technology. Filming took place entirely on location, across Italy, Greece, Morocco, Iceland, Scotland and Malta. As a result, what you see on screen is genuinely there. You can stand in it.
Why Sicily? Homer got there first
Above all, the choice of Sicily was not a production convenience. In truth, it was a return to the source. Scholars have argued for centuries that several episodes of the poem are set in and around Sicilian waters. Moreover, Homer’s geography maps onto this coastline with uncanny persistence.
Most strikingly, Favignana is widely identified with the island Homer called Goat Island. It is the largest of the Egadi Islands, off Sicily’s north-west coast. In the poem, Odysseus and his crew land there to hunt wild goats and restock before sailing on toward the Cyclops. Filming the story on the very island the text describes is exactly the kind of literal-minded authenticity Nolan is known for.
Moreover, Sicily has been Greek for far longer than it has been anything else. Greek settlers arrived over 2,500 years ago and left temples at Agrigento and theatres at Syracuse that still stand. Therefore, the island does not merely resemble the Homeric world. It is, in a real sense, a surviving piece of it. If you are planning a wider trip, our guide to one week in Sicily shows how to fit these islands into a complete itinerary.
Favignana: the island that became Ithaca
In short, Favignana was the single most important Sicilian location in the production. Nolan, his crew and a company of roughly 500 people effectively took over the main town for months. They filmed in the harbour, along the coast and in the island’s extraordinary coves.
Notably, the island’s geology does a great deal of the work. Centuries of tuff quarrying have left the coastline carved into strange, sheer-sided basins. In turn, the water inside them runs an almost artificial turquoise. Naturally, this is why the island reads on screen as somewhere both real and mythical at once.
- Cala Rossa (Red Cove): the most photographed cove on the island, a quarry-cut inlet of clear water framed by pale rock; the colour is the reason it appears in almost every shot list;
- Bue Marino Cove: another former quarry turned swimming spot, all sharp geometric cliffs and deep blue water;
- The harbour and old town: the working heart of the island, and the base for months of production logistics;
- The tuff quarries: the man-made canyons that give Favignana its distinctive, otherworldly profile.
Favignana before the cameras: tuna, tuff and quiet
It is worth knowing what Favignana was before a film crew arrived. For centuries, the island lived on two things: tuna and stone. The tonnara, the old tuna-processing works by the harbour, was once among the most important in the Mediterranean, and it now houses a museum that explains the island’s economy far better than any guidebook.
The stone matters just as much. Favignana’s soft tuff was quarried and shipped across Sicily for building, and the quarrymen cut downward rather than outward. Consequently, they left behind sunken gardens, sheer walls and the flooded basins that visitors now swim in. Indeed, the coves that look so cinematic on screen are, for the most part, industrial archaeology filled with seawater.
Above all, this is why the island rewards more than a day trip. Stay overnight and the crowds thin dramatically after the last afternoon hydrofoil leaves for Trapani.
Castello di Santa Caterina: the house of Penelope
High above Favignana, on the summit of Monte Santa Caterina, sits a 15th-century fortress that the production turned into the royal seat of Ithaca. This is where Penelope and Telemachus hold out against the suitors circling the throne. Among them is Antinous, played by Robert Pattinson.
Moreover, the castle was also, by some distance, the most physically punishing location of the Sicilian shoot. Indeed, there is no easy road to the top. Cast, crew and heavy camera equipment had to be moved up steep terrain repeatedly. As a result, helicopters became almost as essential as cameras during those days. Filming a Nolan picture, as one account of the shoot put it, apparently counts as cardio.
In the end, for visitors the reward is the same one the production was chasing: a fortress on a peak, with the whole Egadi archipelago and the Sicilian mainland laid out below. Reaching it means a genuine uphill hike, so go early and carry water.
Levanzo and the rest of the Egadi Islands
Filming also spread to Levanzo, the smallest of the three main Egadi Islands. Its rugged coastline and hidden coves added further Mediterranean texture to the film. Indeed, Levanzo is a quieter proposition than Favignana. There is one small village, very few cars and a shoreline best reached by boat.
Above all, the Egadi make sense as a group. Ferries connect Trapani and Marsala to Favignana, Levanzo and Marettimo in well under an hour. Therefore, island-hopping between them is entirely realistic in a single trip.
The Aeolian Islands: the wine-dark sea
Off Sicily’s northern coast, the volcanic Aeolian Islands supplied a completely different register: darker, more elemental, and closer to the parts of the poem where the sea turns hostile. Naturally, this is fitting. These islands take their name from Aeolus, the keeper of the winds, who hands Odysseus a bag containing every gale except the one that would carry him home.
- Lipari: the largest and busiest of the islands, with an imposing clifftop citadel and an archaeological museum that is genuinely world-class;
- Vulcano: a smoking, sulphurous crater and bubbling mud baths, the closest thing in Europe to a landscape that looks actively mythological;
- Basiluzzo: a tiny uninhabited islet facing Stromboli, whose volcano erupts in small bursts around the clock, giving the horizon a permanent flicker of fire.
Indeed, the Aeolians are best understood from the water rather than from land. Our guide to sailing in Sicily and the Aeolian Islands covers how to see the archipelago the way the film’s crew did, by boat.
Anecdotes from the Sicilian shoot
Nolan productions are famously secretive, and this one was no exception. However, a number of details have emerged since filming wrapped, and several of them are worth knowing before you go.
- Locations were deliberately withheld: many sites were kept quiet while cameras rolled, specifically to stop crowds from gathering and disrupting the shoot;
- Around 500 people descended on Favignana: an island whose winter population is a fraction of that number, for a shoot lasting months;
- The ships were real: water sequences used a full-scale longship rather than digital vessels, in keeping with Nolan’s refusal to lean on CGI;
- Practical effects throughout: the production’s mandate was zero green screen, which is precisely why the Sicilian light and water look the way they do on screen;
- Italy’s Wildside serviced the Sicilian shoot: the same company that handled physical production on Edward Berger’s Conclave in Rome;
- Principal photography ran February to August 2025: a 91-day shoot spread across six countries, with Sicily among the longest single stints.
Who is in it, and where you see them
Naturally, Matt Damon leads as Odysseus, alongside Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson and Charlize Theron. The Sicilian material centres on the Ithaca storyline. Therefore, the scenes shot at the Castello di Santa Caterina and around Favignana carry a good share of the film’s domestic tension, not only its storms and sea-monsters.
How to visit The Odyssey locations in Sicily
In short, the good news is that almost everything is genuinely accessible. Therefore, a location-led trip is straightforward to plan, provided you get the ferries right.
- For Favignana and Levanzo: base yourself in Trapani or Marsala on Sicily’s west coast, then take a hydrofoil across; the crossing is short and runs frequently in summer;
- For the Aeolian Islands: ferries depart from Milazzo on the north coast, roughly an hour from Catania airport by road;
- Getting around Favignana: rent a bicycle or a scooter; the island is small, flat in the middle, and cars are more trouble than they are worth;
- Reaching the castle: allow a couple of hours for the climb up Monte Santa Caterina, and start early to avoid the midday heat;
- Best months: May, June, September and early October, when the sea is warm, the light is good and the islands are not at peak capacity.
If you are driving the mainland legs between Trapani, Milazzo and the airports, our guide to car hire and driving in Sicily covers rental, parking and the practicalities that catch visitors out.
Beyond the film: what else is worth your time
In truth, a location trip works best when it is not only a location trip. Indeed, the same corners of Sicily that drew Nolan are surrounded by things worth seeing on their own terms.
- Trapani and the salt pans: windmills, shallow salt flats and some of the best sunsets on the island, right beside the Favignana ferry port;
- Erice: a medieval town on a mountain above Trapani, frequently above the clouds;
- Segesta and Selinunte: Greek temples in open countryside, closer to the Egadi than most visitors realise;
- Stromboli by night: boat trips run out to watch the volcano’s eruptions against a dark sky, an experience the film’s own landscapes can only gesture at.
For a broader look at where the island’s best swimming actually is, our guide to the top beaches in Sicily covers the coastline beyond the Egadi.
How can Time for Sicily help?
Naturally, island-hopping in Sicily rewards planning: ferries change with the season, Favignana books out in August, and the Aeolians work far better with a boat than without one. We build itineraries around the islands that matter to you, arrange the crossings and the accommodation, and make sure a film-location trip still leaves room for the food, the temples and the swimming. Book a call and tell us your dates and we will handle the rest.
The oldest story, in the oldest sea
In truth, there is something fitting about the most technically ambitious film of 2026 being made, in large part, on islands that a poet described nearly three thousand years ago. Naturally, Nolan could have built Ithaca on a soundstage. Instead, he took 500 people to a small Sicilian island and shot it where the story says it happened. Come for the film. Stay for the water, the tuff cliffs and the volcano on the horizon that has been erupting since long before anyone thought to write any of it down.
Photo: Unplash
