Where Is Cersei's Walk of Shame Located in Dubrovnik?

Where Is Cersei's Walk of Shame Located in Dubrovnik?

Cersei's Walk of Shame was filmed on the Jesuit Stairs in Dubrovnik's Old Town, the wide baroque flight that runs from the Jesuit Church of St Ignatius down to Gundulić Square. From the Stradun, walk to its eastern end, turn left up Ulica od Puča, and the staircase appears on your right within about two minutes. The steps are a public street, free to visit at any hour.

I have walked this route more times than I can count, and it still catches people out. Visitors expect the stairs to be somewhere dramatic, tucked behind a fortress or at the top of the walls, when in fact they sit in the middle of the living Old Town, a few paces from a morning market and a row of café tables. The staircase is easiest to find from the bottom: stand in Gundulić Square, where the market stalls set out each morning, and look up. The broad steps climb straight to the church facade, and that vertical view, framed by the surrounding buildings, is the shot the cameras used.

The location works on screen because it is genuinely steep and genuinely enclosed. The stairs are flanked by tall buildings on both sides, so the frame compresses around the figure descending them, exactly the claustrophobic effect the scene needed. When you stand at the top and look down, you see what the production saw: a single, unbroken line of stone dropping away beneath you, with nowhere for the eye to escape to either side. It is one of the most photographed single spots in the city now, and the reason is not hard to understand.

The stairs belong to the Jesuit complex at the eastern edge of the Old Town, and the church at the top is a working religious building, so a little restraint goes a long way when you visit. Tour groups gather on the steps through the day, and mass times take priority over photography. Early morning is the quiet window, and it is also when the light comes down the staircase almost vertically, which is the closest you will get to the look of the scene without a film crew.

If you want the locations put in context rather than hunted one by one, the cluster of Game of Thrones tours in the city covers this staircase together with the Red Keep, the Blackwater Bay quay and the other King's Landing spots, usually inside two or three hours. The trio below is a fair cross-section of what is on offer: a pure walking tour, a tour that adds Lokrum and the Iron Throne photo stop, and a longer option with the same extras.

The pure walking option, the Game of Thrones Walking Tour from Dubrovnik Walks & Sea Kayaking, runs from $29 per person and is rated 4.9 across 1,052 reviews. It is the one I would point a first-time visitor toward if the stairs are the main draw, because the route through the Old Town naturally passes the other filming locations on the way. For everything else the city offers beyond King's Landing, the Things to Do in Dubrovnik homepage is the fuller index.

What Is the Walk of Shame in Dubrovnik?

The Walk of Shame is a scene from Game of Thrones in which Cersei Lannister is forced to walk naked through the streets of King's Landing as penance, and it was filmed on the Jesuit Stairs in Dubrovnik. In the show the staircase stands in for the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor. Fans now use the name for the real staircase itself, which is why the phrase has become a Dubrovnik search term.

The scene is one of the most memorable in the series, and it is the reason a quiet baroque staircase in the far corner of the Old Town now draws a steady queue of photographers. In the story, the walk begins at the Sept and ends at the Red Keep, and the production needed a setting that could carry both the descent and the crowd lining it. Dubrovnik supplied both: the stairs for the descent, and the surrounding streets, packed with extras, for the gauntlet.

What the name does not tell you is that the staircase has a life entirely separate from the show. It was built as the approach to the Jesuit Church of St Ignatius, part of a church and college complex that is one of the largest single ensembles in the Old Town. The steps drop into Gundulić Square. On market mornings the square fills with stalls selling figs, honey, oranges and lavender, and the staircase becomes a backdrop to a working market rather than a filming location. That contrast, a global TV landmark sitting above a local fruit market, is very Dubrovnik.

The wider Old Town that surrounds the stairs has its own standing, independent of any television series. UNESCO inscribed the Old City of Dubrovnik in 1979 under criteria (i), (iii) and (iv), covering a property area of 24.7 hectares with a 1,188.6-hectare buffer zone, and the site spent 1991 to 1998 on the List of World Heritage in Danger during the war years. The Stradun itself, the limestone main street the stairs sit just off, is 298 metres long, and the 1272 Statute fixed the final plan of both the city and its main street, per the Dubrovnik Tourist Board's own account of the Placa. The staircase you came to photograph sits inside that fabric, not beside it.

For readers who want the deeper background on the whole set of locations, the Game of Thrones filming locations guide walks through every spot in the city, and the Walk of Shame guide is dedicated to this single scene. If your question is more about whether a tour is worth it at all, the answer page on whether a Game of Thrones tour is worth it sets out the case both ways.

Where Is the Walk of Shame in Dubrovnik?

The Walk of Shame staircase is at the eastern end of the Old Town, where the Jesuit Stairs connect the Jesuit Church of St Ignatius above with Gundulić Square below. The nearest landmark is the Stradun: from its eastern end at Luža, head north up Ulica od Puča for roughly 150 metres and the stairs appear on the right. The spot is inside the pedestrian zone, reachable only on foot.

Finding it is genuinely simple once you know the trick, which is to steer by the square rather than the church. Every visitor finds the Stradun eventually, and the Stradun runs between two landmark squares: Pile Gate at the west end and Luža at the east. From Luža, where the clock tower and the Sponza Palace stand, you take the street that leaves the square to the north, Ulica od Puča, and within two minutes the staircase opens on your right, dropping down from the church into Gundulić Square. Coming from the other direction, anyone staying in or near the Ploče district will reach the stairs from the eastern land gate first, which is even quicker.

The table below gives the three practical approaches, with what you will see at the start of each:

Once you are standing there, the orientation is unmistakable. The church facade fills the top of the frame, the steps run straight down, and the square spreads out at the bottom. The famous camera position, the one that reproduces the show's framing, is from partway up the stairs looking down, with the square soft in the background. Expect company: this is one of the most visited single points in the Old Town, and on a busy afternoon the steps carry a constant shuffle of tour groups taking their turn on the shot.

If you would rather have someone else handle the route-finding and the scene-setting, this is exactly what the themed walks do best.

One point worth making about the stairs themselves: they are a public thoroughfare, not a ticketed attraction. There is nothing to buy, no gate, no fee, and no way to be charged for standing on them. The only costs involved in visiting are the ones you choose, a tour, a coffee in the square, a print of the scene. That makes it one of the cheapest landmark visits in a city where the headline attractions are not free, and it is a fair reason to build a morning around it.

How Do the Stairs Connect to the Rest of King's Landing?

The Jesuit Stairs stand in one of the densest filming clusters in the city: the Pile Gate area doubled as parts of King's Landing, the Ploče district and Fort Lovrijenac stood in for the Red Keep, and the Old City Port served as Blackwater Bay. All of these sit within a 15-minute walk of the staircase, which is why the themed tours can cover so much ground so quickly.

The geography is the quiet advantage Dubrovnik had as a filming location. The show's King's Landing needed a walled medieval capital with a fortress above a sea approach, a main ceremonial street, a port and a great religious edifice, and the Old Town supplies all four inside a compact pedestrian area. Fort Lovrijenac, standing on its 37-metre-high sea rock just outside the western wall, played the Red Keep in exterior shots, and the Dubrovnik Tourist Board's page on the fortress records the setting that made it work. The staircase, playing the steps of the Great Sept, sits within an easy walk of all of it.

This density is why a guided walk is such an efficient format here. The Game of Thrones Walking Tour from Dubrovnik Walks & Sea Kayaking, from $29 per person and rated 4.9 across 1,052 reviews, moves between these locations on foot while a guide matches each street corner to its scene. The themed tours follow the same mechanics with the scenes swapped in for the history.

The tour that goes furthest is the Original Game of Thrones Tour with Lokrum and the Throne, from $25.57 per person and rated 4.8 across 6,132 reviews, which adds the short boat hop to Lokrum Island and the replica Iron Throne photo stop. One recent review from Lewis sums up the appeal: "Brilliant day! Tour guide was very welcoming and informative! Highly recommend if you love Game of Thrones, definitely book the extra hour to go to Lokrum Island aswell! Also helps you get your bearings in the Old Town!" If the stairs are the anchor of your visit and you want the fuller King's Landing circuit around them, that is the version that collects the most locations in one booking.

For visitors travelling on a tighter budget, there is also a free Game of Thrones and history walk on GuruWalk, rated 4.74 across 444 reviews, which covers the core Old Town filming spots on a pay-what-you-want basis. It is a genuinely different product from the paid tours, lighter on depth and dependent on the guide you draw, but for the staircase itself, which costs nothing to see, it pairs well.

When Is the Best Time to Visit the Stairs?

The best time to photograph the Jesuit Stairs is before 09:00, when the Old Town is at its quietest and the tour groups have not yet assembled. The crowd picture in Dubrovnik is unusual: cruise passengers peak in September and October, not July and August, so early autumn mornings are when the timing matters most. The staircase is a public street and can be visited at any hour, including evening.

The crowd logic in this city rewards anyone who understands it, and it is not the logic most visitors arrive with. The Port Authority's own figures show cruise passengers at the Port of Dubrovnik peaked in September 2025 at 101,246 and October at 100,132, above July's 96,072 and August's 87,385, with 625,257 passengers across the full year. The folklore says avoid July and August; the data says the shoulder season is actually the busier cruise window, and the staircase sits close enough to the Stradun that cruise-day crowds reach it within minutes of disembarkation.

What that half-hourly curve means in practice is that the window between 08:00 and 10:00 is the one worth protecting. Before 08:00 the staircase is often nearly empty, the market in Gundulić Square is being set out, and the light comes down the steps cleanly. By 10:00 the count is at its morning peak and the stairs carry a rotating cast of tour groups. The counts are ship capacity rather than confirmed walkers ashore, so treat them as an upper bound on the day's pressure rather than a promise of exact numbers, but the shape of the curve is reliable.

Season matters less than you might think for this particular spot, because the staircase is open year-round and the weather that ruins a beach day leaves it perfectly photogenic. The sea temperature context is a fair proxy for the seasons: the long-run September average for this coast is about 23.6 degrees and August about 25.8, against January's 14.3, and those are open-water averages rather than beach readings. In midsummer the stairs offer something the beaches do not, shade and stone, and in winter you will often have them almost to yourself, with the caveat that some of the city's other attractions, including the cable car, run reduced schedules from January to March.

A practical note on etiquette, because it genuinely affects your photos: the stairs are the approach to a working church, and services take precedence. Check the church door for mass times if an uninterrupted shoot matters to you, keep the top of the staircase clear, and be patient with the people doing exactly what you are doing. The rotation moves faster than it looks.

Can You Walk the Same Steps Cersei Walked?

Yes, the Jesuit Stairs are a public street and you can walk every step of them, free, at any time of day. Nothing about the staircase is ticketed or restricted. The only paid element is optional: a guided Game of Thrones walk that puts the scene, and the rest of King's Landing, into context, from $25.57 per person depending on the option you choose.

The steps themselves are original, worn stone, and they get a steady stream of visitors re-enacting the descent, usually with clothes on and usually laughing. There is no marker on the staircase itself naming the scene, which surprises people, so do not go looking for a plaque. The location identifies itself by its shape: once you have seen the frame from the show, the staircase is instantly recognisable from either end.

For the fuller experience, the comparison below sets out the three themed options that all include the staircase on their route:

The differences between them are mostly about how much of the King's Landing circuit you want collected in one go. The pure walking tour is the shortest and cheapest commitment and stays inside the walls. The two Lokrum options add the island, which played the garden city of Qarth in the series, and the Iron Throne photo opportunity, which is the closest thing the franchise offers to a souvenir you can sit on. The staircase appears in all three, because no Game of Thrones route through Dubrovnik can skip it.

If you would rather go independently, that is a completely legitimate way to do this. Walk the stairs early, photograph them from the lower third of the flight, then follow the route in reverse toward Luža and pick up the other locations as you go. The free walking tour guide covers the pay-what-you-want options in the city, including the GuruWalk Game of Thrones walk, for anyone who wants a guide's voice without a fixed price.

Common Questions About Cersei's Walk of Shame in Dubrovnik

Where is Cersei's Walk of Shame located in Dubrovnik?

On the Jesuit Stairs, the baroque flight running from the Jesuit Church of St Ignatius down to Gundulić Square, at the eastern end of the Old Town. From the Stradun's eastern end at Luža, walk north up Ulica od Puča for about two minutes and the staircase is on your right. It is a public street, free to visit at any hour.

where is cersei's walk of shame in dubrovnik?

The same place: the Jesuit Stairs above Gundulić Square. The staircase drops from the Jesuit Church of St Ignatius to the square where the morning market sets out, roughly 150 metres north of the clock tower at Luža.

What Is the Walk of Shame in Dubrovnik?

It is the Game of Thrones scene in which Cersei Lannister walks naked through King's Landing as penance, filmed on the Jesuit Stairs, which stood in for the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor. The name has since attached itself to the real staircase, which is now one of the most photographed spots in the Old Town.

Where Is the Walk of Shame in Dubrovnik?

At the Jesuit Stairs, connecting the Jesuit Church of St Ignatius with Gundulić Square. The nearest landmarks are the Stradun to the south, the clock tower at Luža a two-minute walk away, and the Ploče Gate a five-minute walk east.

Do You Need a Ticket for the Walk of Shame Stairs?

No. The staircase is a public street with no gate, fee or ticket. The only costs are optional, such as a guided Game of Thrones walk, which starts from $25.57 per person depending on the option.

When Is the Best Time to Photograph the Stairs?

Before 09:00, ideally before 08:00. The Old Town headcount climbs steeply through the morning, and cruise passengers peak in September and October rather than midsummer, so early autumn mornings are when the early start matters most. Evening is also quiet and the stone photographs well in low light.