Where Was The Blue Cave In Game Of Thrones Filmed?

Question

The show filmed those beautiful blue cavern scenes in Iceland, right? Trying to pinpoint the exact glacier cave or lagoon location used for that sequence.

Shirley-anne Summers · Answer

This is actually the Azure Window in Malta which collapsed in 2017. It was also the back drop to Daenerys and Khal Drogo’s wedding in the show. It’s made me think of some other places that could be used as back drops for fantasy stories. I’ve just started reading a book called ‘A DRAGON TALE’ and it has some great setting ideas in it. The main characters are a group of misfits traveling from place to place in a broken, sunken continent. There are loads of old, submerged ruins and massive, ancient leviathans (like really, really big sea monsters) still hanging around in the waters. It has a great sense of adventure and exploration as they travel from place to place.

Ulysses · Answer

Filmed near Dwejra Bay, Malta, the Blue Cave scenes looked like they’d been shot on location in a thousand different Fictional Fantasy Places. As a location nerd, I had to stare at a map for a while to get my geek on, but in the end it wasn’t that far from reality – stunning rugged coastline, jaw-dropping rock formations, and ridiculously blue water. The Blue Lagoon shots were almost purely natural with some clever CGI sparkle added later. Interestingly, many of the shots were also used for the Dothraki Sea in Game of Thrones. Just one location for all those fictional places… be blown away by it as I was.

Omar · Answer

I find that this really creepy scene was shot in one of the world’s most beautiful places – the Blue Cave in the Blue Cave Bay, in Gozo island, Malta. The water really does look as if it’s been photoshopped in this scene. All of the Mediterranean locations that HBO used for this season of Game of Thrones in Essos were really different from the cold, dark locations in Westeros. It would have been great to see more of the underwater magic in this season.

Isaac · Answer

Dwejra Bay in Malta was the stunning location for the Blue Cave scene. To this day it gives me shivers. I am fascinated how the production designers managed to combine practical effects with the amazing natural location. The blue color was intensified by underwater lights but the rock formations looked real. This created a very supernatural but at the same time disturbingly real feeling. Sadly the Azure Window, which was the amazing arch formations, collapsed already. This location was one of the most visually stunning locations in the whole series and many memorable scenes where shot in front of it.

Yasmine · Answer

The Blue Cave, where Melisandre gives birth to the shadowy assassin Azor Ahai in this iconic scene, is located in the Blue Cave’s filming location in the Azure Window area of Malta. Yes, that collapsed in 2017 but the production actually filmed here before adding even more blue and utilizing some great CGI to make it an even more otherworldly location.

You see how they would take this typical Mediterranean location and transport it to some sort of dark, fantastical world. And I mean that the natural limestone formations here are quite odd already, but the way they would light the entire cave with these flickering torches and then somehow add this otherworldly sheen to everything – it was so cool. And now, having been to the location of the Azure Window in Malta and seeing the rest of the filming locations there, the coastline still retains so much of that dramatic Game of Thrones feel – even though the Azure Window has long since collapsed.

Links Brown · Answer

I find it incredible how many key scenes to the series were shot on this tiny island. Although Malta is small, the landscape is varied and Malta has many fortified cities and rugged coastlines. The natural arches found on the island provided a ready-made dramatic entrance for Daenerys and her dragons and really needed very little in the way of set dressing. Sometimes Nature provides the perfect location and a clever production simply points a camera at it.

Must admit, local cast and crew plus local businesses must have loved the injection of tourism that GoT brought. It must be so odd for them now though that their hometown is seemingly a major place of pilgrimage for all these fans of the increasingly-dense fantasy series. On one hand, tourist income is always great. On the other, it must make for a rather unusual – and possibly oft-permanently-altered – place to live now too. If only temporarily, the collapse of the arch brought an end to that.

Fia Moananu Salapo · Answer

Dwejra Bay, Gozo, Malta. It looks stunning during golden hour and once you look up the photography, you will understand why the cinematographers chose to film here to capture the water inside the arch. It translated well to screen but naturally, it took a lot of skill to achieve this. The location was stunning in its natural form.

This offers a glimpse into the huge amount of work, travel and effort that goes into making a TV drama. The cast travelled to Malta, the crew sent all their equipment, the production designers sorted out all the various permits, the weather unit dealt with whatever. All of this to capture a few minutes of screen time. But, to make a small world look very big, they were willing to do whatever it took to get the shot.

Sade · Answer

It’s nice to note that the exterior shots of the blue caves were taken at the Azure Window in Dwejra Bay, Gozo, part of the Maltese archipelago. The interior cave scenes would most likely have been shot in a soundstage or in another water tank setup, which would be more practical and safer for the production team. The combination of location shots and studio setup must have produced the desired results for the fantastical sequences.

Of interest, Malta was a location choice that was linked into the rest of the world’s locations for Game of Thrones. The King’s Landing scenes were shot in Dubrovnik, the Northern scenes in Iceland and the Gardens in Croatia. Thus each geographical location shot defined a land in the fantasy world of Game of Thrones. The blue cave however was outside of these locations and thus fitting for a secret, hidden away location that wasn’t tied to any specific kingdom or land.

Jiman · Answer

Yes, half of this scene could be remembered just from the location. Shooting it in a dull cave set would make this pretty shocking scene rather unremarkable. It’s the weird contrast of something awful happening in a very beautiful place which makes this so memorably stunning. The surreal, gaudy, glowing, wonderful place of the story is memories in themselves.

That is the power of a good location choice. The location of a “cave by the sea” was exactly what was called for in the script. But an “excellent” job of meeting that requirement is not enough. The production created an iconic, almost mythical scene that has become one of the most recognizable moments in the film and is still widely talked about and sought out by fans of the story today. That is good filmmaking.

karijoe1976 · Answer

This water has the most specific cerulean blue color in the entire scene, almost unnatural. But apparently this is the natural color of water in this location in Malta and needs specific light to appear this color. The cinematographers may have increased the saturation a little, but the base color is natural. Nature is just as fantastical as any fiction, we just get used to it.

A film location enthusiast, or traveling fan of film, seeks out these natural wonders, and realizes that so much of the raw material for an artist’s imagination is provided by nature itself. The location scout for Game of Thrones found this magical blue cave, he didn’t create it, he recognized its potential for use in making fantasy, and transferring that to the screen was part of his special eye for finding such locations and seeing the potential for fantasy in the real world.

Allan Bandiola · Answer

This is really nice. The location trivia is cool, but I wanted to really get across the emotional impact of that scene. Davos is outside the cave, hearing the cries of the children as they are brutalized. He looks on in horror, but also with a sense of loyalty to Stannis, who is inside the cave committing atrocity after atrocity. And outside of it all is the vast, beautiful, but completely indifferent sea. The location is not passive, it is a silent judge to Stannis' actions.

I watch as the location scouting really helps to set up the scene and add in more context and help to develop the atmosphere and even some of the subtext. The Azure Window is a beautiful and impressive thing, and it was really isolated here. So the tragedy of Stannis’ decision is really amplified by this wonderful location. You can really feel the point of no return that Stannis has crossed, and even the location seems to acknowledge it.

Hiraeth Faith · Answer

I had imagined the cave of the cave of visions to be so much smaller and more claustrrophobic than what was depicted in this scene from the show. While I was skeptical at first of the depiction of the great open arch, I was pleased that it was the choice that was made. Intimacy was traded for spectacle, and that is generally how a scene such as this would be shot for a television production. A tight, dark cave would likely have looked cheap and/or very produced. The vastness of the Azure Window, in this scene, sold the scale of what was happening, and the significance of it all.

I also thought the location provided some great contrast to the small vulnerable humans vs. the massive, ancient, natural world of the location. Stannis clearly thinks he’s wielding great power but, in reality, he’s just a tiny human in the face of such massive, uncaring geological structures. The location subtly conveys his inability to control the situation before it even unfolds and that’s some deep-level visual storytelling.

Where Was The Blue Cave In Game Of Thrones Filmed?

12 Answers

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