The Film's Ithaca Isn't This Ithaca - Good

The 2026 film sent searches for this island up ninefold, so let’s answer the question everyone arrives with, factually and first: the movie was mostly not shot here. The palace of Ithaca - where Penelope waits out the suitors - is the Castello di Santa Caterina on Favignana, largest of the Egadi Islands off western Sicily (its interiors were built in a Los Angeles studio), with the wider shoot spread across the Peloponnese (Nestor’s Cave, Voidokilia, Methoni), Morocco (Ait Benhaddou standing in for Troy), Iceland’s black-sand south, Scotland and Malta. Big epics chase light, logistics and tax structures; islands with one mountain road and no airport don’t host 500-person crews.

Why that’s the right answer anyway

The real Ithaca’s claim on the story was never a location credit

• it’s the setting itself, argued over since antiquity and walkable today for the price of good boots. Favignana played Ithaca for cameras; this island has been playing it for twenty-nine centuries, complete with the scholarly doubt that keeps the question alive. Visiting here after the film is the difference between a set and a source.

Doing the film-fueled trip honestly

If the movie lit the fuse, the island delivers best in this order: the full-day tour for the shape of the place (4.6/5 across 139 bookings, from $70); the Odysseus sites on foot for the myth itself; the private Odysseus day if the epic is the whole point of the trip. Peloponnese completists can add Voidokilia and Methoni on the mainland leg - the film’s Greek locations are real places too, and better for being free of queues so far.

Location reporting from production coverage as of August 2026; this site is an independent guide with no connection to the film.