With the recent release of the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, my whole family has fallen back into Pottermania. As we may have a spare day or two to do some sightseeing on our upcoming trip, I’ve decided to research some of the Harry Potter sightseeing opportunities. While there are many tour companies that will take you around to all of the sights in London and around the rest of England, there are also a few great web sites offering free self-guided tour information.
One of my favorite is hosted by A Tasty Pixel. I like this one because they’ve plotted many of the key sights into a Google Map and have also described what is at each location. Tasty Pixel used this post by Crushable and a private sightseeing company called Concierge Desk as source for most of their plots.
View Harry Potter Sightseeing Map in a larger map
Within London you can see Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station, peer into Gringotts Bank through the doors of the Australian House Exhibition Hall, and find the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron on Stoney Street.
There are also a few other good self-guided tours within the city at Carry On Tours and London Discovery Tours.
In order to see Hogwarts you’ll have to get out of the city. Hogwarts scenes were filmed in multiple locations including Christchurch College and Bodlein Library at Oxford as well as Gloucester cathedral in, you guessed it, Gloucester. If you’re willing to go way up island, you can also check out Alnwick Castle.
I think Oxford has moved up a bit on our candidate list of day trips out of London.