It was a brave move for Netflix to adapt The Leopard, the famous 1958 novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa about the vanishing world of the aristocracy in Sicily. The original 1963 film adaptation has legions of fans, and indeed has been how many people have discovered the magic of the book.
The novel follows Don Fabrizio, the patriarch of the distinguished Sicilian Salina family, and his nephew, Tancredi, as the future of the family starts to head down a new path and Garibaldi's forces, intent on completing the Risorgimento, slowly approach their home. While the novel starts and finishes in Palermo, where the family have their main home, much of it takes place at their summer palace, Donnafugata (which was inspired by the real town of Palma di Montechiaro and named for a real Sicilian palace in the countryside in the south of the island).
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The Netflix adaptation, which stars Kim Rossi Stuart as Don Fabrizio, Benedetta Porcaroli as his daughter Concetta, and Deva Cassel (Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel's daughter) as the nouveau riche Angelica, was filmed on location in Sicily, including the cities of Palermo, Catania, Trapani and Syracuse, which retain many of their 19th-century streetscapes, with other scenes also filmed in Rome and the surrounding Lazio countryside and Turin. As befits a book which laments the decadent, declining world of a grand aristocracy, the series is full of sun-baked palazzos with extravagant Baroque and Rococo interiors.
All of Netflix's The Leopard filming locations
Sicily
Episode 1 opens with the city of Palermo preparing itself for Garibaldi's forces to arrive. Scenes were shot in the magnificent Palermo Cathedral, while Don Fabrizio arrives to visit his daughter through the striking Baroque square known as Quattro Canti, where the four ancient quarters (canti) of Palermo all meet. Later in the first episode, the execution scene also takes place here, and in episode 2, the entrance of Garibaldi's troops is through this iconic square. Several more of Palermo's loveliest squares make an appearance throughout the series, including Palazzo Comitini, Piazza Pretoria and Piazza Bellini.
One of the most prominent locations in the series is surely the splendid Villa Valguarnera in Bagheria, just outside Palermo, which stands in for the Salina palace outside Palermo in various scenes throughout the series. This town was once a popular summer retreat for the Sicilian nobility as they escaped sweltering Palermo, and while it's not quite so pleasant these days, a relic of its splendour remains in this vast Baroque estate. Designed in the early 18th century and built in the succeeding decades, it has a distinctive curved facade at the front and magnificent gardens. This is not the first time it has been on film – the house has also served as the setting for an iconic 2016 Dolce & Gabbana perfume ad featuring Sophia Loren. Amazingly, you can rent parts of it as a holiday house, for the full Leopard experience.
This important Baroque palace in the centre of Palermo (very close to the Quattro Canti) is now home to the city council, but was built in the 18th century for Michele Gravina Cruillas, prince of Comitini. The main salon, the Sala Martorana, is spectacularly frescoed with the ‘Triumph of Love’ by by Gioacchino Martorana, who was responsible for decorating several palaces in Palermo in the second half of the 18th century. It is this room that stands in for the beautiful dining room at the palace.
The interiors and gardens of several other palazzos in Palermo played their part in bringing the Salina home to life, including Villa Tasca, which is especially well known for its tropical gardens and seems to be the setting for many of the garden shots, Villa Wirz (where Concetta first finds Tancredi in Episode 1, in the nude), and Villa Spedalotto.
This public beach outside Trapani was the setting for some of the coastal scenes filmed for The Leopard, including the scene at the end of episode 1 where Garibaldi's troops land in Sicily.
Built by successive generations of the Paternò Castello di Biscari family throughout the 18th century, this huge palazzo in the eastern Sicilian city of Catania is a riot of Rococo frescoes and stucco. The ballroom is particularly spectacular, and features a small dome where musicians can play while looking down on a ball, and this is exactly how it is used in episode 2 of the series, where it features as the setting for Palermo's ‘Liberation Ball.’
This region of wilderness west of Catania is known as Sicily's desert, with strange, steep hills suddenly erupting from the earth and deep ravines running through it. It has a unique geology but is also filled with beautiful grasses, shrubs and herbs. In the series, it is the rural surrounding of Donnafugata.
The island of Ortigia forms the historical centre of Syracuse – it is where the city first began to develop millennia ago, and still contains its oldest buildings. Linked to the mainland by two bridges, it is just one square kilometre in size, but packed with 17th, 18th and 19th-century buildings. In the Netflix series, the main square in Ortigia, Piazza Duomo, was used for scenes set in Donnafugata, the fictional country town where the Salina family retreats from their main home in Palermo.
The Palazzo Beneventano Del Bosco, a grand urban palace on the Piazza Duomo in Ortigia, Syracuse, is one of the city's Baroque jewels, and was used for the exterior of the Salina palace of Donnafugata, as the family waits to hear the results of Sicily's vote to join in the unification of Italy.
Rome
Rome's spectacular opera house was the setting for the opera house in Turin where Don Fabrizio and his family spend an evening in episode 5. Rome's beautiful Teatro dell'Opera was in fact only completed in 1880, so would just have opened at the time when the action takes place.
There was plenty of pressure on the famous waltz scene at the end of the series, since the 1963 version of Don Fabrizio's dance with Angelica has been said to "compete for the most beautiful sequence committed to film." In that film, the ball was filmed in the sala degli specchi (hall of mirrors) in the Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi in Palermo, but in the new film, a location in Rome was chosen. The Grand Plaza Hotel on Rome's famous shopping street, Via del Corso, was built in the 1830s and retains much of its historic glamour, with beautiful frescoed ceilings, elaborate mouldings, sweeping staircases and majestic chandeliers.
The Leopard is available to watch on Netflix.
