Barrandov Studios

Where it sits. Barrandov Studios occupy a hillside terrace in Prague 5, above the left bank of the Vltava on the southern edge of the city, at Kříženeckého náměstí — a square named for Jan Kříženecký, the architect-photographer who shot the first Czech films in 1898. The district takes its name from Joachim Barrande, the French geologist who worked the fossil-rich Silurian and Devonian beds of the river bluff below in the nineteenth century; the rock face still carries a plaque with his name. This is the largest film studio in the Czech Republic and one of the largest in Europe, and for foreign producers it has been the standard Central European backlot for three decades.

The story behind it. Czech cinema is bound up with the entrepreneurial Havel family. In 1921 Miloš Havel merged his American Film distribution business with the Biografia company to form the A-B joint-stock company, initially working from stages in the garden of a Vinohrady brewery. When sound arrived, purpose-built stages became unavoidable. His brother Václav Maria Havel — father of the future president — was planning a villa quarter on the Barrandov hill, and Miloš persuaded him to add a studio to the scheme. Construction to Max Urban's designs began on 28 November 1931 and finished in 1933; the first Czech feature shot there, Murder on Ostrovní Street, followed in 1934. Within a few years Barrandov had 300 permanent staff, was turning out as many as eighty films a year and had become the best-equipped studio in Central Europe.

War, nationalisation and the new wave. During the German occupation, between 1940 and 1945, the studio was expanded with the intention of rivalling Berlin and Munich: three vast interconnecting stages were begun in 1941 and finished in early 1945, giving more than 3,400 square metres of shooting space that still draws productions today. After the war Barrandov and its smaller sibling at Hostivař were nationalised, and new laboratories, an effects stage with a back-projection tunnel and an underwater tank were added. In the 1960s the studio housed the Czechoslovak New Wave — Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová, Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Ivan Passer, František Vláčil, Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos among them. Through the 1970s and 1980s output ran at about seventy pictures a year, heavy on comedies and fairy tales, while American productions began arriving: Barbra Streisand's Yentl and Forman's Amadeus were both made here in the 1980s. Privatisation followed the Velvet Revolution, and after a near-closure in 2000 the business was rebuilt on foreign work. A 4,000-square-metre stage opened in December 2006.

On screen. The Narnia films are among Barrandov's most substantial modern tenancies. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) used Prague after its New Zealand shoot, working here and in the Bohemian Switzerland national park before wrapping in February 2005. Prince Caspian returned to Barrandov on 1 April 2007 for the bulk of the picture, because Andrew Adamson judged that New Zealand lacked stages large enough for the sequel. What was built here included:

• Miraz's castle, erected outdoors at full 61-metre scale rather than as a digital extension, in a winter that dropped to around −20 °C
• Miraz's courtyard, the largest set of production designer Roger Ford's career
• Aslan's How and the Narnians' underground hideouts, with Trufflehunter's badger den modelled on camera footage taken inside a real sett — and its roof raised three inches because Ben Barnes was too tall

Barrandov's wider credit list runs from Mission: Impossible and The Bourne Identity to Casino Royale, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, The Zookeeper's Wife and Robert Eggers's Nosferatu. The volume of that foreign work is not an accident of scenery alone: a national production incentive introduced in 2010, paid as a rebate on qualifying Czech spend, keeps Prague competitive against Budapest and the studio's stages booked well ahead.

Getting there and timing. Barrandov is a working studio rather than a theme park: there is no permanent visitor attraction, and access is by pre-arranged guided tour, which typically covers the historic stages, the costume and props departments and the backlot when production allows. The site is reached from the city centre by tram to the Barrandov terminus above Smíchov, or by bus from Smíchovské nádraží metro station, in roughly half an hour. The neighbourhood rewards the trip on its own account: Max Urban's functionalist Barrandov Terraces of 1929 stand on the bluff nearby, and the Barrandov rock beneath is a protected natural monument with views along the Vltava. Spring and autumn are the practical seasons for tours; summer is the busiest production period and access is more often restricted.