The Chronicles of Narnia: From Belfast and Oxford to the Film Sets

Narnia's author started out in Belfast. Clive Staples Lewis was born in the city on 29 November 1898, in Ulster, before the partition of Ireland. Today a bronze statue of his character Digory, the boy from The Magician's Nephew, stands at the Holywood Arches in front of the Holywood Road Library, so a character from the books now stands in the writer's home city, the natural place to begin a Narnia journey.

In 1930 Lewis moved into The Kilns, near Oxford, with his brother Warnie, Mrs. Moore and her daughter Maureen. It is the house where he wrote all of his Narnia books, and the house itself was featured in them. His gardener, Fred Paxford, is said to have inspired Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle in The Silver Chair. Today the C.S. Lewis Foundation runs the house as the Study Centre at the Kilns.

The Eagle and Child, nicknamed the Bird and Baby, is a pub in St Giles', Oxford. The Inklings, an Oxford writers' group that included Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, met there. It was at one of those meetings, in June 1950, that Lewis distributed the proofs for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to his friends. The pub stands on St Giles', in the centre of Oxford.

In the 2005 film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the children evade Jadis' wolves and reach Aslan's camp, where Aslan is revealed to be a lion. The crew filmed in New Zealand, moving to the South Island in November. The Elephant Rocks, large weathered limestone boulders near Duntroon, were transformed into Aslan's camp. The rocks are on a private farm, but access is permitted by a five-minute walk across the pasture from the Island Cliff-Duntroon Road. Sheep may be present.

Visitor guidance: Private farmland: follow the five-minute walk from the parking bay on the Island Cliff-Duntroon Road and expect sheep.

In the film of Prince Caspian, Aslan summons a river god that wipes out most of the Telmarine army. The bridge battle was shot in June 2007 near Bovec, in the Soča Valley in Slovenia, a place chosen for its resemblance to New Zealand. The filmmakers had around forty days to build the large bridge. Bovec depends on tourism, and part of the film was shot here.

Location precision: The film was shot near Bovec in the Soča Valley; the pin marks the town, not the exact bridge site.

In the third film, a painting of a ship carries Edmund, Lucy and their cousin Eustace into an ocean in Narnia, where they are rescued by the Dawn Treader. Caspian invites them on a voyage to rescue the seven Lords of Narnia whom his uncle Miraz exiled. Exterior shots on board the ship were filmed at Cleveland Point and the Gold Coast Seaway in September 2009. The Cleveland Point lighthouse, overlooking Moreton Bay and Raby Bay in Queensland, was disassembled in 2009 to fit a large prop boat.

Location precision: The ship scenes were shot at Cleveland Point and the Gold Coast Seaway; the pin marks the Cleveland Point lighthouse.