The Grand Budapest Hotel: Zubrowka in Saxony

The grand lobby of the Grand Budapest — red carpets, the lift, the concierge's desk where M. Gustave rules — is the atrium of the Görlitzer Warenhaus, an Art Nouveau department store opened in 1913 beside the Frauenkirche. It had closed in 2009, so the crew could re-dress it freely for both eras of the story: the glamour of 1932 and the hotel's faded 1960s. The upper floor served as the production office. A new owner bought the building in 2013 and plans to reopen it as a store.

Visitor guidance: The façade faces Demianiplatz in central Görlitz; the interior opens only for occasional events.

In 1968 the old Zero Moustafa, now owner of the faded hotel, invites a young writer to dinner in an almost empty dining room and tells him how he came to own it. That room is the concert hall of the Stadthalle, opened in 1910 and closed since 2005; the crew hung a huge painted alpine backdrop over its stage. The same building also played the trophy room where Madame D.'s will is read and the museum's hall of armour. The writer first meets Zero in the hotel's "thermal baths", filmed in a historic Görlitz bathhouse.

When the ancient Madame D. dies, Gustave and Zero rush by train to her estate, Schloss Lutz, where her greedy son Dmitri waits. The façade they arrive at is the baroque manor of Hainewalde, built in the 1750s near the Czech border. The house has its own dark history — in 1933 the Nazis used it briefly as a camp for political prisoners — and stood empty for decades before a local association, founded in 2000, began restoring it. The interiors you see on screen come from another castle.

Visitor guidance: The manor is seen from outside; its restored rooms open for tours on Germany's Open Monument Day in September.

Most of Madame D.'s interiors — its halls and staircases — were filmed inside Schloss Waldenburg, the 19th-century seat of the princes of Schönburg-Waldenburg west of Chemnitz. Madame D. has left Gustave the priceless (and invented) painting Boy with Apple; when Dmitri objects, Gustave and Zero take it off the wall, hang another picture in its place and smuggle it out. After decades as a clinic the castle has been restored step by step since 2005 and is open to visitors.

Visitor guidance: Schloss Waldenburg runs guided tours of its restored rooms; check opening times before you go.

Accused of poisoning Madame D., Gustave is locked up in Checkpoint 19 Criminal Internment Camp, where he ladles out porridge, wins over the convicts and joins Ludwig's escape plot. The prison scenes were shot at Schloss Osterstein in Zwickau, a Renaissance castle that really was a prison from the 18th century until the end of the Second World War; the writer Karl May and Rosa Luxemburg were both held here. Restored, it reopened in 2008 as a care home.

Visitor guidance: The building is a care home; view it from the castle moat and the square outside.

Agatha, the apprentice at Mendl's patisserie, smuggles the escape tools into the prison inside Courtesan au Chocolat pastries: the guard slices every other parcel to check it, but can't bring himself to cut anything that beautiful. The interior of Mendl's is Pfunds Molkerei in Dresden, a dairy shop opened in 1892 whose walls and floor are covered in hand-painted Villeroy & Boch tiles. In 1997 Guinness listed it as the most beautiful dairy shop in the world. It is still a working shop.

Visitor guidance: Pfunds Molkerei is at Bautzner Straße 79 in Dresden's Neustadt; expect queues at busy times.

Outside, Mendl's sits on a picturesque street of the old town in the shadow of the Trinity Church. Görlitz came through the Second World War with little damage, and its well-preserved streets keep film crews coming back — Inglourious Basterds and The Reader were also shot here. The cast and crew stayed at the Hotel Börse on the Untermarkt, and the owner and staff were rewarded with small parts in the film. Expect to recognise corners of Zubrowka on any walk between the Obermarkt and the Neisse.

Location precision: The exact doorway isn't documented; the pin marks the Trinity Church at the corner of the street.

Visitor guidance: The old town is compact and walkable; the Untermarkt and Obermarkt squares are five minutes apart.

Deputy Kovacs, the lawyer handling Madame D.'s estate, makes the mistake of going to the Kunstmuseum alone. Dmitri's killer Jopling, in black leather, stalks him through the empty galleries and corridors, and Kovacs never comes out. The museum exterior and galleries are the Zwinger, the baroque palace complex built in Dresden between 1710 and 1728, which really is a museum: it houses the Old Masters Picture Gallery, with Raphael's Sistine Madonna, and the Porcelain Collection.

Visitor guidance: The Zwinger courtyard is free to walk through; the galleries charge admission.