Book a hotel due White lotus Making it look good was just the beginning. The expanded version of the puffs includes volcanic wine country, an invitation-only whiskey room in Edinburgh, and a Slovenian cellar where bear salami is aged by the moon.
These are the European destinations worth a trip around, and the movies to check out before and after your experience.
Sicily: for wine lovers
In 1971, Francis Ford Coppola couldn’t film in Corleone, as it seemed too modern. Moving east to the villages of Savoca and Forza d’Agro near Taormina, he accidentally gave Sicily a cinematic identity that has never eroded. Bar Vitelli, where Pacino’s Michael Corleone first saw Apollonia, still serves granita under the same vine-covered terrace. The church of San Niccolò, where they were married, still stands at the end of the same cliff-side street. The second season of “White Lotus” doubled down on Taormina and introduced the wine country of Etna to a generation of viewers who had yet to find it.
On the slopes of Etna, the Benanti and Tornatore wineries produce Nerello Mascalise and Caricante from vines rooted in volcanic soil, unlike anything else growing in Europe at the moment. Planeta deals with broader education, with wines that have become a point of reference for the entire island. The property is the Monaci delle Terre Nere, a former Augustinian monastery dating back to the 17th century, which Guido Cova spent years transforming into a Relais & Chateaux wine estate – 62 acres of vineyards, citrus orchards and lava stone terraces, with a kitchen that lives and dies by what the farm produces that morning. Before leaving the area, have lunch or dinner at Anciovi, the poolside seafood restaurant at San Domenico Palace – Four Seasons Hotel. White lotus Already photographed — mandatory.
Venice: for art lovers
Steven Spielberg used Venice well in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) – a boat chase on the Grand Canal and Campo San Barnaba transformed into a library. The city has not changed its approach since then. In 2026, the Venice Biennale returns the global art world to the only city that has been offering this kind of thing since before the concept existed. The Giardini and Arsenal suites are serious business – formally ambitious and often politically uncomfortable. The side galleries in the palaces and deconsecrated churches of all six places are where the best discoveries happen.
The St. Regis Venice, located on the Grand Canal near the Accademia Bridge, handles the city’s logistical complexity without making a fuss about it – the butler service is perfect for simplifying every need in a city where nothing is simple. Dining at Airelles Venezia in the new ABC Kitchen restaurant is a must.
Slovenia: For food lovers
Ljubljana is a small, walkable and multi-layered city – a castle on the hill, a covered market on the riverbank, and an architectural confidence that far outweighs the size of the city. Jaz by Ana Ros, which opened in 2023 inside the AS Boutique Hotel in Copova ulica, is a meal worth planning. “JAZ” is Slovenian for “I” – this is Ross unencumbered by the pressures of Hisa Franco, her three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the Soča Valley. There are no tasting menus. Shared panels. The menu changes daily based on what’s coming from the Ljubljana market that morning and what Ros feels like cooking.
AS Boutique Hotel has 30 rooms designed by Ofis Architects with views of the castle. The essential trip is to Ribnica Valley, 45 minutes south, where David Lessar runs BioSing from an underground bunker. Lessar cures bear, venison, and pork into salami aged according to the phases of the moon in clay-lined rooms—no additives, no artificial shortcuts, nothing that didn’t exist in 1492 when the Rybnica Valley first began trading. Ros offers the products at Hisa Franco. The tasting in Lessar’s cellar, with wines from his private collection of 10,000 bottles, is one of the most theatrical dining experiences available anywhere in Europe.
Puglia: for agritourism enthusiasts
The film No Time to Die (2021) used the valley town of Gravina in Puglia in one of its action scenes. The area has survived a decade of discovery and emerged intact. The right base in 2026 is Tenuta Negroamaro, a 10-suite estate near Gallipoli on the Ionian Coast – seven hectares of pine forests and red-earth gardens, interiors by designer Olga Ashby, private plunge pools and a kitchen from the estate. It is located in Salento, the quieter southern end of the region, where the pace is slower.
Amsterdam: for architecture lovers
George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones were all in Amsterdam in 2003 to film “Ocean’s Twelve” with Soderbergh using the Nine Streets canal houses as his backdrop.
The Rosewood Amsterdam, which opened in the former Palace of Justice on the Prinsengracht, is the place where the industry crowd should stay. Studio Piet Boon handled the design. Kunstmest Consulting has sponsored nearly 1,000 businesses across four studied themes. Re-Masters brings together contemporary artists and the Dutch Golden Age – think Vivien Sassen in dialogue with Vermeer’s legacy. Innovative Media displays digital works on a large screen in the lobby in collaboration with the Nxt Museum in Amsterdam. Urban art covers street culture. Polish village engravings by Frank Stella and grandfather clocks by Martin Bass are among the featured pieces, and guided art walks run alongside rotating exhibitions in the gallery.
Belgrade: For off-road enthusiasts
Ralph Fiennes chose Belgrade to film Coriolanus (2011), his directorial debut – filming took place in the Serbian Parliament building, across the city’s bridges and through a street scene that compresses medieval modernist, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and socialist architecture into a single scene. Finnis said the spirit of the city attracted him first and the locations confirmed that.
Opened in 1912 as the most glamorous address in the Savamala district, the Bristol Belgrade Hotel has spent the better part of a century living up to its standards – the Rockefellers had a suite named after them, Tito was a regular, and Garry Kasparov played chess here. After closing in 2018 and spending two and a half years under the hands of 16 restoration artists working alongside Belgrade’s Institute of Cultural Monuments, it reopened in early 2025 as a five-star independent property with 143 rooms, a Michelin key and a separatist Art Nouveau façade that looks exactly as Nikola Nestorović designed it in 1912. The library is the room to know – a fireplace, books and the right atmosphere for a city that rewards long evenings.
Scotland: for whiskey lovers
Sam Mendes filmed the Glencoe sequence for Skyfall (2012) in the Scottish Highlands. Now the Highlanders have a second claim to popular culture – “Traitors,” both the UK BBC edition and the American Peacock version, films at Ardros Castle, a 19th-century Scottish baronial estate on more than 100 acres along the River Alness north of Inverness. The castle’s long corridors and backdrop of the Highlands have made it one of the most iconic locations in reality television in the world.
Balvenie Distillery in Dufftown is a whiskey visit worth the trip. Ground brewing is still done in the traditional way, making barrels on site, a 30-year vertical tasting done without theatrics. It’s the kind of place that turns the curious into the serious. Down in Girvan, Hendrick’s Gin Palace operates at a very different frequency: the Victorian greenhouse, the cucumber cocktails, the theatrical self-awareness of a brand fully committed to its own unique style.
In Edinburgh, the Gleneagles Townhouse in the New Town is smaller and in some ways sharper than the flagship in Perthshire, where the energy of the members’ club is properly restrained. One Hundred Prince’s Street has views of the castle and its proportions that remind you of what Edinburgh was built for. Both call for survival For a longer period. The reservation worth pursuing is the private room at Johnnie Walker Princes Street: invitation-only, archive bottles, and the kind of conversation about provenance and rarity that doesn’t happen on a standard tour.
