Where Was ‘Dune: Part Two’ Filmed?

01.03.2024 - 15:09 / cntraveler.com / Star Wars

With the release of Dune: Part Two, audiences will return to Arrakis and find it largely unchanged. As in the first film, the desert planet is compiled largely of plots of Earth we know as Jordan’s Wadi Rum and Abu Dhabi. This time around, however, we get to go deeper. As Paul Atreides and his mother Lady Jessica (Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson, respectively) assimilate to life amongst the Indigenous Fremen people, they unlock access to parts of the planet previously unknown to outsiders.

Arrakis is not the sole setting for the film, either—like Caladan, the ancestral home planet of House Atreides for which Norway was a stunt double in the previous film, there are other worlds explored here that sharply contrast Arrakis’s burning red desolation. The Emperor’s planet, for example, is on Earth an Edenic cemetery in Italy; the hideous Harkonnens live in cold overdevelopment like rats in a sewer. To understand how the world of Dune: Part Two was assembled, we sat down with French-Canadian production designer Patrice Vermette to hear more.

What’s new in the world of Dune?

We did film in some of the same countries, because we were based out of Budapest and we went to Jordan and Abu Dhabi. But we went to different spots within each of these countries. This time, we also went to a very special place to me in Italy. It is called the Brion cemetery and was designed by Carlo Scarpa. First of all, Carlos Scarpa is a huge inspiration, not only for Dune but for me [personally], since the ‘90s when I discovered a book about him at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. The Brion tomb was commissioned by the Brion family, who owned an Italian electronics company. It’s just outside Asolo, a very small medieval town in the Grappa mountains. They call it “the city of a thousand views.” It’s beautiful, great food, we stayed at Albergo al Sole.

The Imperial planet, home to Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), was filmed at the Brion tomb in Italy.

We were looking for a site for the Imperial planet, and for a garden. I showed Denis [Villeneuve, the director] images and he said, “Wow, this is exactly the language of our film.” Which, of course, it was because my inspiration for the film was Scarpa. We started by asking the owner, the son of the commissioner, and he said, “Absolutely not. There will never be any shooting in the cemetery, and tomorrow will not be the day when we start.” But then, he realized it was for Dune and not for Star Wars, which he had turned down before. He was curious about what we wanted to do.

So, after my initial scouts in Jordan I flew to Venice—Asolo is in Veneto, 45 minutes inland. We needed to be approved, and we met Scarpa’s favorite student, Guido Pietropoli. Scarpa had died