Vilnius: Where the Chernobyl HBO miniseries came to life

HBO’s acclaimed miniseries Chernobyl has been all the talk among movie-lovers and historians recently. The show depicts the morning of 27 April 1986 in Soviet Ukraine, and the events that followed. It brings the famous man-made nuclear catastrophe back to life on screen after 33 years after it happened in real-life, and manages to capture the horror so well viewers almost feel like they’re there in person.

However, Chernobyl wasn’t filmed entirely in Ukraine. In fact, the perfect locations were captured in different parts of Lithuania, but mostly Vilnius. The 30km exclusion zone near Chernobyl is a risky tourist destination – the surrounding area won’t be fit for human habitation for another 20,000 years – but Vilnius offers a safe adventure visiting the authentic HBO Chernobyl locations.

Interesting facts

The series took almost 1,000 hours to make, was shot in some 40 different locations, and had upwards of 5,000 people participated in the filming. Moreover, the Chernobyl miniseries is by far Lithuania’s biggest production to date.

Finding the perfect locations

Lithuania served as the perfect backdrop for the miniseries because of its common Soviet history with Ukraine and the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, which is now gradually being shut down. However, one of the main tasks was to transform the areas back into the Soviet era. ‘They have become a part of Europe, they have come a long long way and it was about going backwards and peeling things away,” the show’s creator Craig Mazin recounted to the press. The massive, destroyed reactor sets were built in a local film studio, but most of the action takes place in the city: 60 of the 88 days were spent filming in Vilnius, recreating the lives of the people and the lies their government told them. Check out the most important locations here:

1. Fabijoniškės – the infamous Pripyat

Staneviciaus St.

The City of Pripyat plays a very important role in the story. In just a short glimpse it clearly illustrates how the Soviet government treated its own people. The Fabijoniškės district in Vilnius built around the period of the actual catastrophe in the late 1980s was chosen as an ideal location. “It reflects the idea of Pripyat, of an idealised Soviet city of the future, quite wonderfully. Fabijoniškės is a symmetrical district, which is great for the current trend of translating the architecture of that era for the big screen: the forms are aggressive, there’s a lot of concrete and greyness,” says Jonas Špokas, CEO of Baltic Locations, the company that managed the filming locations for Chernobyl. The district was chosen because the crew wanted to show a young town and old trees couldn’t surround the apartment blocks.

2. Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights – the KGB prison

Auku St. 2A

Currently one of the most-visited museums in Lithuania, this building was an actual KGB prison and still has its KGB cells and torture chambers intact. The original pieces of furniture where prisoners were held were used in the shooting of the series. “As we moved through it we were aware that there were the ghosts of history around us. They showed us these rooms, the kinds of torture that I would have never even contemplated,” says Mazin in the Chernobyl podcast.

3. Former cultural and sports centre of the Ministry of the Interior – Pripyat hotel restaurant

Žirmūnų St. 1E

Constructed in 1982, this building has kept some of its history intact. Authentic furniture, a coffee-maker on a bar, and the wall decorations make for an ideal cinematographic location. “I adore the building, even if we only used it to film the Pripyat hotel restaurant, and the scene where the three volunteer divers are selected,” says J. Špokas. The building is a beautiful representation of Soviet modernist architecture.

4. Vilnius Gediminas Technical University Faculty of Architecture  – Courtroom

Trakų St. 1

One of the oldest streets of Vilnius is home to an 18th-century building that has become the perfect backdrop for the trial process, with halls reminiscent of the Soviet era. The witnesses of the Chernobyl disaster still remember that the trial was carried out in a hurry in a school hall. This building was once the Tishkevich Palace, but after World War II, it was turned into a college and is now a part of the university’s buildings.

5. Former government guesthouse – Pripyat hotel

Latviu St. 70

Situated in the green and relaxing district of Žvėrynas next to the Russian Embassy, this building was used to accommodate high-level Soviet officials visiting the country over a twenty-year period. Both the leader of the Soviet Union and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President resident Richard Nixon stayed here on their respective visits to Lithuania. The unchanged building served as an ideal location, reminiscent of the Soviet era and the meetings that took place within it.