It was a fortress built in the first half of the 15th century by Louis II and his son Louis III, the princes of Anjou. Montmajour doesn’t stand on a river so the arrival of Eleanor ( Katharine Hepburn) by barge from England was filmed beneath Château de Tarascon on the bank of the River Rhone, about ten miles north of Arles. The painter Vincent van Gogh, who lived in Arles for much of his life frequently painted and drew the Abbey and the surrounding countryside. Montmajour Abbey, more formally the Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Montmajour, was a fortified Benedictine monastery built originally in the 10th century on what was once an island north of Arles, in what is now the Bouches-du-Rhône Department.

Now managed by the Indre-et-Loire Council, Chinon is a museum and tourist attraction.įor the film, the exterior of Henry’s court at ‘Chinon’ is the Abbey of Montmajour, near Arles. In the 13th century, King Philip II of France captured Chinon after months of siege and the castle has remained under French control ever since. Henry II (who was himself born in France) lived and held his court in Chinon on the bank of the Vienne River in the Indre-et-Loire department. In the 12th century, France had its own king, but much of the country was under English rule. Nearly a mile of curving, sandy beach southwest of the village of Marloes, this is the same beach overlooked by Ravenna's castle in 2012’s Snow White And The Huntsman, with Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth.Īlthough Henry II was king of England, most of the story takes place in France. The Lion In Winter location: Geoffrey supervises an ambush on the beach: Marloes Sands, Pembrokeshire, Wales | Photograph: Wikimedia / Jeremy OwenĪbout ten miles to the west of Pembroke, the coldly Machiavellian Geoffrey ( John Castle) is masterminding military manoeuvres on the sweeping beach at Marloes Sands, on the southern coast of the Marloes Peninsula.

The Lion in Winter by James Goldman