Tale of Tales: Garrone's Italian Castles

The film's first tale begins with a sacrifice. To give his wife a child, the King of Longtrellis plunges into the icy waters of the Alcantara gorge, a canyon carved by lava near Taormina, and tears out the heart of the sea dragon living there. The gorge supplied mainly the sea dragon scenes. Principal photography began on 15 May 2014 and lasted four months, all of it on location in Italy.

Visitor guidance: The gorge is a walkable canyon in Sicily, near Taormina.

Salma Hayek's queen of Longtrellis lives in Donnafugata Castle near Ragusa. Its stone labyrinth, a maze of dry stone walls laid out like the one at Hampton Court, is where the queen, in a heavy brocade dress, playfully chases her son Elias. The castle is neo-Gothic, with a maze and gardens that the production used as the queen's world.

Visitor guidance: The castle and its stone maze are open to visitors near Ragusa.

While Donnafugata supplies the outside, the rooms inside the king and queen of Longtrellis's residence belong to Sammezzano Castle in Reggello, a rare example of Moorish architecture near Florence. The film's tale of two inseparable boys, Elias and Jonah, born of the same magic, plays out in these decorated halls, where the queen's jealousy of Jonah grows.

Some scenes of The Two Old Women were filmed among the old trees of Bosco del Sasseto, near Acquapendente in upper Lazio. This is the tale in which a spell is cast on old lady Dora to make her young again, so that she can marry the King of Strongcliff, played by Vincent Cassel.

The home of the King of Strongcliff and his new bride is the medieval Castle of Roccascalegna, a fortress built by the Lombards to defend against Byzantine attacks, perched on a rocky outcrop in the province of Chieti. In the story he has his guards throw old Dora out of a cliffside window. The interiors were shot elsewhere, at Chigi Palace in Ariccia.

Visitor guidance: The castle on its rock stands above the village of Roccascalegna in Abruzzo.

In The Flea, the king of Highhills, played by Toby Jones, lives at Castel del Monte, an octagonal castle in Apulia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. He is the king who hides a flea in his room as a pet, until it grows gigantic. The castle is also the one on the film's poster, next to Roccascalegna.

Visitor guidance: The castle stands on a hill near Andria and is open as a museum.

Inside shots of The Flea were filmed in another castle in Apulia, the Norman-Swabian castle of Gioia del Colle. Its throne room is the set where the king's contest plays out: whoever guesses what animal the giant hide came from wins the princess, and an ogre correctly identifies it by smell.

Visitor guidance: The castle is in the centre of Gioia del Colle.

The runaway princess Violet escapes with the help of a family of acrobats, and the ogre gives chase, killing the entire family. The chase through the vie cave of Sorano in Tuscany, an Etruscan road network cut between walls of tuff 20 metres tall, gave the film its most dramatic landscape.

Location precision: The vie cave form a network around Sorano and Sovana; the pin marks the village of Sorano, not the exact lane in the shot.

Visitor guidance: The lanes can be walked from Sorano.