Our family has always loved the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang movie. A couple of years ago, we were lucky enough to visit Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which is the town in Germany the scenes of the Toymaker's village were shot. (The Castle scnes were shot at Neuschwanstein, some 200km away.) Rothenburg is a stunningly beautiful medieval town, which has remained largely intact despite two world wars and still has the original defensive wall and towers surrounding the old town.
Knowing the connection with the movie, I took a lot of time and trouble to get some decent shots of Plönlein (above), which is the location that comes up every time you Google Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Movie Locations. It is a gorgeous street, even by the standards of European medieval towns (and by this stage, we'd seen a few). There's just one problem...
It doesn't appear in the movie.
When we got home, and watched the movie for the 10,000th time, we realised that the actual scenes don't match up with where they're reputed to be according to the tourist brochures - so being a nerd with too much spare time, I decided to do some detective work with Google Maps & Streetview and work out where they really are. here's the result:
Layout of Rothenburg ob der Tauber with scene locations
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang arrives at the village.
The car lands at the Doppelbrücke (double bridge) over the Tauber River. Most of the background scenery appears to be part of the actual location, with the castle and mountains added as a matte painting, possibly in camera.
Entrance Archway
The Potts enter the village through Kobolzeller Turm (Kobolzeller Tower).
The Toymaker's Square.
Spitalkirche und Spitalstor (Lutheran Church). Main courtyard for the toymaker, villagers. The scene is shot in the coutyard at the rear of the church. The building next to the church appears to part of the church, so I suspect the "Hotel Einhorn" was added for the movie. Sadly, the fountain and statue are now gone.
Caractacus and the Toymaker climb the tower
Strafturm (‘Punishment' or 'Penalty' Tower). Incredibly intact after all these years and unchanged since the movie. There's a great bit of 'movie magic' here where the actors cross the courtyard at Spitalkirche und Spitalstor to climb a couple of steps and are then immediately shown climbing the rest of the stairs up the tower... 1.6Km away.
Caractacus and the Toymaker look over the wall
My favourite bit of 'movie magic' in the film (not including actual special effects). Not only is the wall they are looking over some 2Km from the stairs they just climbed to get to it (and across a river), but they are looking the wrong way, as the town they are supposed to be scoping out is actually behind them. You can make out St Jacob’s Church with twin towers. White tower is Rathaus (Town Hall). The round tower with red roof is possibly the Kleiner Stern (there are a lot of towers in Rothenburg)
Following that is my photo taken from where they were supposed to be, looking South across the Tauber to where the film scene was shot.
Rothenburg is amazing. If you ever get the chance, it's well worth a visit. Shout out to Scenic Tours who did a fantastic job getting us there and to many other incredible places.
Disclaimer: Pretty obviously, I don't own most of these images.