Les Visiteurs: Carcassonne to Thoiry

The film opens in 1123 with King Louis VI on a romantic escapade and Count Godefroy de Montmirail guarding his meeting place. The medieval scenes were shot at the Château Comtal in the Cité de Carcassonne, built at the beginning of the 12th century. Godefroy's fatal crossbow shot at his future father-in-law was filmed in the Carcassonne countryside, on a 100-metre tracking shot run backwards while the Carcassonne rugby team pulled up the rails. Shooting here fell during the floods of summer 1992.

Visitor guidance: The Cité de Carcassonne is open to walk through; the Château Comtal sits inside its walls.

Thrown into the late 20th century, Godefroy rides into a church with his horse and begs for asylum from the stunned priest. A calendar on the wall tells him the year is 1992. The scene is set at Thoiry in the Yvelines, and rehearsals took place on the door of Saint-Martin, which keeps the marks of the hooves. The shot of the horse striking the door was not filmed here, for reasons of angle.

Visitor guidance: The church stands in the village centre of Thoiry.

Ermenonville stands in for the castle of Montmirail in the modern day, now owned by Jacquart, a descendant of Godefroy's old servant. Godefroy is appalled that a peasant now owns his castle, and in its chimney he finds the last vestige of the medieval castle and a secret mechanism revealing an underground passage. The building is an 18th-century château in the Oise, and it also appears in Les Visiteurs 2.

Jean Reno, as Godefroy, is seen on horseback on the Argenteuil bridge, which carries the road over the Seine between Gennevilliers and Argenteuil. The present steel arch bridge was rebuilt in 1947 and is 232 m long. The old Gennevilliers power station is also visible in the film. The shoot ran from June to October 1992.

Visitor guidance: A busy road bridge with a recent cycle lane and pavements; cross it on foot or by bike.

Scenes of the film were also shot at the Château de Vigny in the Val-d'Oise, in front of the town hall on the rue Beaudoin and place Rohan. The same castle served for the comedies Les Barbouzes and Les Tontons flingueurs, which is why film fans know it. For Les Visiteurs it adds one more modern-day backdrop to the story of a 12th-century knight and his squire lost at the end of the 20th century.