The Silence of the Lambs: Filming Locations from Quantico to Pittsburgh

The film opens with Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee at Quantico, who is recruited by Unit chief Jack Crawford to interview the imprisoned Hannibal Lecter. Her training ground was real: the FBI allowed scenes to be filmed at the FBI Academy in Quantico, and some FBI staff members even acted in bit parts. The academy was first opened for use on May 7, 1972. It is a working FBI site, so it is a place to know from the outside rather than a stop to visit.

Lecter is held at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and the film shows its forbidding exterior in Pennsylvania. The exterior of the Western Center near Canonsburg served as the setting. The old hospital campus no longer exists: its administration building, the last remaining structure, was demolished in late 2011, and the land around it was integrated into the Southpointe development. The pin marks Southpointe, the area where the building stood.

Location precision: The hospital building is gone, so the pin marks the Southpointe area of Canonsburg that now covers the old Western Center land.

Clarice Starling takes the investigation to a natural history museum, where she meets the entomologist who can help her. The scene was shot at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History on Forbes Avenue in Oakland, Pittsburgh. The museum gained prominence in 1899, when its scientists unearthed the fossils of Diplodocus carnegii, so it is an easy stop for dinosaur fans as well as film fans.

Visitor guidance: The museum is at 4400 Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh's Oakland district.

When Lecter is moved to Memphis, he is kept in a makeshift cell in the courthouse. In the film that building is the Allegheny County Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum on Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh. This is where he uses a piece of Chilton's pen to unlock his restraints, murders two guards and escapes in an ambulance. Today the hall is a military museum.

Visitor guidance: The hall is a museum at 4141 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh.

In the final act, Starling pursues Gumb into his basement and discovers Catherine trapped in the well. The Victorian home used as Buffalo Bill's house in the film is in Perryopolis, Pennsylvania, and went up for sale in August 2015. It is a private home, so the pin marks the town of Perryopolis rather than the house.

Location precision: The sources name the town of Perryopolis but not the street, so the pin marks the town centre.