“I am simply fascinated by what Czech artists and craftsmen accomplished. Rome was built on the back lot… and everything is so realistic,” stated director Oliver Hirschbiegel during the shoot of the first season of Borgia show back in 2010.
The construction of more than 1,700 square meters area is situated on the famous Barrandov Studios’ 16 hectars backlot, which is adjacent to the studios, directly connected to all necessary services and perfectly accessible (not more than 20 minutes by car from the center of Prague as well as from Prague international airport).
This spring, Barrandov Studios has transformed the amazing piece of historical architecture, appearing in Borgia for last three years, to an exterior permanent set. “Construction brings you to a historically accurate Saint Peter’s Square in Rome and adjacent narrow streets in the Early Renaissance era, the turn of the 15th and 16th century,” comments CEO of Barrandov Studios Petr Tichy. “This is going to be the very first permanent set at producers’ disposal ever built in our studios. Thus, it opens a wide range of possibilities of cooperation with both domestic and foreign producers.”
The set has already hosted several projects, some of them being historical narratives, others taking place in our times. Square and the streets “played” these days’historical city center in ABC’s Missing with Ahsley Judd. It stood for the Middle-Ages city landscape in Wanderhure series for SAT 1. BBC’s The Musketeers used it for re-creating France of the 17th century. And one of the latest projects, Danish co-production The Shamer´s Daughter directed by Kenneth Kainz, incorporated the set into the production design for an adaptation of the best-selling series of fantasy books The Shamer Chronicles written by Lene Kaaberbøl.
BARRANDOV STUDIOS – We make the creativity real since 1931
For more than eighty years, the studios have been the location of choice for over 2,500 Czech and International films. The studios’ primary objective is to ensure the presence of all film-related fields and services in one convenient location. Basic in-house services are: stages and back lot rental, costumes and props making and rental, set construction, sound and video post-production.
Barrandov Studios is the production hub for the international film and television community. The studios hosted such big budget projects as Casino Royale, The Chronicles of Narnia, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra or Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol. Features like Snowpiercer, Serena (in production), The Last Knights (in production) or Child 44 (in production) used Barrandov facility recently, as well as the television projects such as Borgia, Missing, Crossing Lines or The Musketeers.
