According to Czech film database Česke Filmové Nebe the film was partially shot on Castle Moritzburg, Watercastle Švihov and the countryside around Klatovy. The interior of the prince's castle was shot in Babelsberger Filmstudios, near Berlin, the interior of the stepmother's manor is some farm in Germany, as Václav Vorlíček shortly mentiones on the new Czech DVD, the stable is one of the stables of Sächsisches Landesgestüt (Saxonian National Stud) in Moritzburg according to Gerd Lilie.

The Castle

At least location shooting shows Castle Moritzburg in Moritzburg about 15 km northwest from Dresden. The castle lies picturesquely on an artificial island in a lake which today is rather shallow. It served as a hunting castle for the saxonian noblemen before in 1945 it got into the hands of the state through a land reform. Today there is a museum. The shop within sells amongst informative video cassettes about the castle and Dresden even the German 3nfc...

If you visit Castle Moritzburg you will easily recognize the places in which 3nfc was shot, e.g.:

Very friendly Mrs. Faltin of the castle's management reported, that shooting had lasted two weeks. In his interview on the new Czech DVD, Václav Vorlíček reports of the difficulties the crew had while shooting the exterior.

adress:
Schloss Moritzburg
Schlossinsel
D-01468 Moritzburg
tel. 0049-35207/873-0
fax.0049-035207/ 873-11

opening hours:
April-October November-March (apart from Jan.) January	daily Tuesday-Sunday only Saturday/Sunday	9-17.30 9-17.30 9-17.30
closed on 24.12 and 31.12 in summer hourly guided tours (you can see the interior, as far as it is accessible for the public, without a guide, but you will miss a lot of interesting details) entrance: 4,10 €, resp. 2,60 €, guided tour costs 2 € extra in winter rounds on 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16 Uhr

The Stepmother's Manor - Watercastle Švihov

Watercastle Švihov¹⁾ lies in Bohemia about 10 km north of Klatovy.

After in Winter 2001 Tom went from Bavaria to Švihov and took these pictures (great commitment, thanks, Tom!), doubts occured about the statement of place of Česke Filmové Nebe. On Tom's fotos you could not recognize anything from the film. There was no wooden balcony, the crumbled gate seemed to be far too big and another gat edid not exist. Besides, Tom wrote, the watercastle leis very near to the village Švihov, so that it would have been impossible to ride for it from an open landscape, as can be seen in the film. Only one spot (last picture) looked like in the end of the film when Cinderella comes riding majestically towards the prince. The rest seemed to be complete different old ruins.

I got the TV-set beside the PC and compared stills to what Tom sent me by e-mail. No. Zhis really di not look like the stepmother's manor. Would I have to start again and try to get informations from the Czech I experienced as not very willing to write back? I decided to visit Švihov myself. At least a close look I wanted to have onto this stupid castle.

Summer came, finally I got holidays. It was not the right flair for a 3nfc-pilgrimage, but one does not complain. Before, I tried to get freeware for making screenshots. I succeded shortly before taking off and took along ten pictures.

First my boyfriend and I went to Dresden, then to Prague. Finally it was time: the last day should belong to Švihov completely. On the eve we went from Prague to Klatovy, where we had planned to spend the night. On the way you pass Švihov. Time had come for some first fotos.

Looked quite nice.

The next day, sun was shining, we went back immediately after breakfast. It is like Tom wrote: The castle lies directly beside the village, parking lot 200 m away.

Of course we firstly searched for the gate you can see in the film.

When I sat before TV-set and PC last winter I had recognized, that shooting must have taken place on two different gates (fans who politely ignore strange changes of hairstyle during the hunting scenes cannot be upset about such 10pt inadequacy ;-)

So we tried to get around the whole arrangement - or rather I rushed forward puling my friend behind.

Well, as we knew already, Švihov is a watercastle, we could not get around...
	So we entered the yard - through the rumbled and too big gate.

Aha. Impressive tower. Nice renovation.

This part of the yard seemed to be familiar:

Here had to be the place, Cinderella appears in her wedding dress. Everything fits: The lines on the wall, the deepening above the doors and the arrangement of doors. - even a cart stood on the place.

We found that the crew had put thin boards infront of the broad barn doors and painted archs onto them. In the film you can see the edges of the facing very clearly.

This too has been freshly roughcasted and lacking a ladder we did not meet the perspective, but you can identify the stepmother's manor easily:

After beeing sure, that at least parts of the film have been shot here, we looked around to find the rest. We had done a guided tour and not seen a wooden balcony, but maybe this had been built specially for the film. As we did not see any other gate than the entrance gate (which by the way was not at all near any tower) either, we had a feeling, that maybe even the gates could have been built as scenery.

I wanted to make sure and walk around the whole area again, butr my boyfriend stood pensively in front of the left side of the former main bulding and stared alternately into the map with the screenshots and on the crumbled wall in which empty windows gaped.

And then he proved: Against this wall Barrandov's scenery builders had leaned the wooden balcony!

Again we did not get the perspective, but in spite - the 10pt windows above the big ones prove, this is the place! The window on the right is te right one on the screenshot, too. The one beside looks like a door in the films. Because of the balustrade you do not see, that it does not go down like a door. The second window from the left hides behind the little oriel and the left window is in the film on the other side of the staircase.

The arrangement of big and 10pt windows is the same. Nevertheless my boyfriend suddenly doubted all. "The space between the windows is to big", he believed. But if you imagine the film-windows without window-frames the scenery builders smartly filled with glass and curtains, it looks the same. And of course the upper, crumbled edge of the wall is never shown in the film.

Exactly here, onto this half wrecked outer wall of an old castle having had no roof for years the wooden construction has been nailed.

By the way: Should there still be ...

Yes.

In the film it is clear that the "inner" gate lies closely beside the balcony. Therefore it had to be added to the round tower. Supposedely it once stood where there is a fence today. To cover the edge between genuine ancient wall and new cardboard wall they leaned some wrecked brushwood against it.

So far so good. In the meantime it had begun raining (these must have been the first showers of the rain which should devastate half of Czech Republic and everyting around the Elbe) and we were the only maniacs still running around with an umbrella, a camera and our red screenshot-map. In return we now knew: Švihov is the "stepmother's manor".

We identified almost all building parts shown in the film. A view from the outside to the nowadays only imaginary inner gate made clear what Tom from Bavaria had supposed before: This could not have been the outer door, too. From this direction Cinderella and later the prince could not have been filmed when riding towards the gate from an open landscape. No space. So where could these shots have been made???

The most promising clue seemed to be the two gables you can see behind the gate from the outside. We noticed that we had to leave the inner courtyard and that we had to go around the castle on the outside. And really, after having stepped out of the gate and having gone to the right around the chapel, you look at two hipped-roof-gables. There is another tower at the very back corner of the second building.

Hey, it nearly looked like in the film.

The tower which you see at the back end of the wall in the film must surely be the same as the one at the backmost corner of the barn. The large pale spot and the 10pt window as well as the formation of both the roofs was just too similar (even though the angle in which we photographed the arrangement was not precise again - next time, we bring a ladder along ;-)). But still - something was wrong.

I just couldn't get it together. "My goodness, what a long wall they built!" I said in view of the two really large barns. After all, the wall in the film runs in front of the barns, bends sharply and ends at the tower. That was a distance of at least seventy metres, which had to be bridged by the piece of scenery. But it looked all so 10pt in the film.

Were we on the wrong track, after all? Everything seemed to fit - the roofs and especially the tower - but the wall looked so strange...was it because of the angle of the camera? I just didn't understand it.

But then, my boyfriend had the decisive idea: It was true that the wall-piece of scenery ran in front of both the barns, but it didn't reach up to the tower at all. They had just built it in an oblique angle to fake the perspective. Additionally, they had thrown up a little mound to strengthen the impression. The ground on which the wall-piece stood had been concealed by the slightly raised path in the foreground. It was all a swindle!

Well, it roughly looked like this. Had we caught the same camera-position, it would look exactly like in the film, but - however - you can imagine it this way, too...

By the way, the faked perspective was also discovered independently by Lothar from Switzerland, who found the first part of our report so exciting that he tried to solve the mystery of the second gate by himself - respect!

And here are the evidential details:

The tower has a new, higher roof today.		The roof of the frontmost barn - the ridge has the same dents; you can notice the dark patch in summer, too
In the foreground, the rest of the tower - it has been rebuilt, the old wall pieces which were the only erect parts once can still be clearly seen.		The double edging under the roof.

We were flabbergasted. The place outside the castle-area did not only look a bit like 3hfa, you could also recognize a lot of details. With much clever construction work Barrandov had created a perfect illusion - no wonder that Hollywood shoots so much in Prague...

There wasn't anything more to see or find out for us this day. Without exception the staff in the castle was very young and did know nothing about the shootings. It's true someone told them once before that long before they were born, there had been a filmproduction there, but nobody either did not want to or could not say more about it. It was much more interesting for them that only recently a film-shooting had taken place there again, but this was something I - for my part - didn't want to know.

It is due to this criminal ignorance that I haven't got a clue what film it was, but - if I remember correctly - it was a Czech TV production. But if you sit in the cinema one day and a castle with three littlle round and one big square tower seems familiar to you, then this will most probably be Svihov...

Later, Lothar found out some other interesting fact: The outward scenery seems to be the same as the one at the inner gate. Just to make sure that you get me right: After the shooting in the yard the film-team took down the whole gate, rebuilt it outside - with the door fixed the other way round - and then added a piece of constructed wall.

These are the facts which harden this suspicion:

On the left, the gate seen from the outside; on the right, the gate from inside - the stones look the same.	From the outside as well as from the inside the ridge of the wall's cover, which is additionally heightened with a slat, stands out.
From the outside (left), from the inside (right), you can clearly notice the same lines (cracks?) around the gate: One horizontal (left) and one vertical (right). Moreover, in both pictures the second (or third?) stone of the encirclement (from the top to the right) is shorter than the other stones. It could be true, indeed! One more compliment to Lothar!

Well, what can I say. This rather short visit in Bohemia was just terrific for me. I hope I could, at least basically, convey to you our excitement and joy of discovery. With all the structural changes and the limited angles of vision it is no wonder that you don't recognize the castle Svihov as the stepmother's property (not even on second glance).

Whoever plans a trip to the Czech Republic should give it a try nonetheless. The landscape is beautiful, we only met very nice people (even though we probably got on their nerves quite often), and the dreamy castle, which is rarely visited by tourists, is definitely worth a visit.

links

Watercastle Švihov has an intersting history, about which you can read on http://www.zamky-hrady.cz/2/svihov-d.htm or
http://www.retour.cz/mesta/svihov/burg.htm.

Fotos on these pages show the crumbled gate in front of all. This misleads to the assumption, the castle is only a ruin. But this is not at all true. A guided tour through the interior pays.

Detail from a big mural inside the chapel, in the rear you can see the castle - in its former size.	The gothic sword was found during excavations on castle ground.
The toilet - slightly draughty from below..	The big dancing hall. The wooden casket ceiling painted with scenes from saints' lifes comes from another castle - besides there was an exhibition at the time.

The landscape

Klatovy¹⁾ is an old kings' town from the 13th century which has not lost her importance as cultural and economic center. Today it is a district town with about 23.000 inhabitants. It lies in the recreation and holiday area Bohemian Forest, 45km south from Plzen and about 100km northeast from Regensburg (Bavaria). On http://www.retour.cz/win/mesta/klatovy/umgebung.htm there are same informations and a picture of "the landscape Klatovy near Zelezne Rudy".