What can be seen at the Harry Potter Museum: Journey into another reality

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

At first glance, the world of Harry Potter is not directly related to the New Year holidays, but the connection nevertheless exists: both are associated with miracles, magic, magic, the clash of evil and good forces. Therefore, the last month of the year can easily be declared the time of rereading and revising books and films about the wizard boy. And some lucky ones will be able to plunge into another reality for a few hours already this year - in the Leavesden Museum in England.

Turning an airfield into a studio and studios into a museum

This is not just a repository of exhibits, this is a place with a special atmosphere and a special history, an island of something magical in the middle of ordinary life, where much is determined by the exchange rate, epidemiological situation, the success of work projects and other factors. At the Leavesden Museum, near London, you can forget about all this - thanks to Warner Bros., whose forces made the Harry Potter films.

Leavesden is located near the town of Watford in the southwest of Hertfordshire. Before the war, an English airfield was built here. Later, the Rolls-Royce plant was located in the hangars of Leavesden, and in 1994 these premises were first used as a film studio: they filmed Golden Eye, the seventeenth Bond film. In 2000, it was here that the first film about Harry Potter was filmed, and even then the studio's management hoped to open a museum in the future. The props were kept, including items that were not required for further filming - for example, the clothes from which the heroes grew up. This is how the expositions of the future museum were formed.

Initially, Warner Bros. rented a studio, and in 2010 acquired it and made it her permanent European site. Now Leavesden is still used for filming movies, but part of the studio is given over to hosting an exhibition from the world of Harry Potter.

Secrets of making the Harry Potter films - in exhibitions

The museum was inaugurated on March 31, 2012. Since then, he has opened the doors to millions of visitors - up to 6,000 people could visit the museum in a day. Despite the rather high prices - of both entrance tickets and additional goods and services, the number of people willing to spend their savings here has always remained high, and this is not surprising.

And those who know the world of Harry Potter as their own, and therefore biased about the various subtleties of its recreation in real life, and those who do not consider themselves a fan of the Potter, - all of them, getting into the museum, find themselves in the grip of a special atmosphere of magic - she supported everywhere, in every square centimeter of space. Moreover, a visit to the museum is not limited to a simple examination of the costumes and props used during the filming.

By the way, everything that is presented in the museum as exhibits was actually used in the creation of the film - from Mr. Weasley's car to Quidditch accessories and robes of Hogwarts students. There is even a room where hairdressers and make-up artists worked during the filming; now there are wigs, hairpieces, various elements of make-up for the characters of the films on display.

The tour of the museum begins in the large foyer. From the very beginning, the illusion of immersion in the life of Hogwarts arises, one cannot do without the Sorting Hat and, of course, the key figures of the Hogwarts world - Professors Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape.

Set for the Harry Potter films and set for the game "Harry Potter"

Since the creators of the museum did not have a goal to reproduce exactly Hogwarts - rather, to immerse the audience in the atmosphere of filming, and also the atmosphere of adventures of the heroes of films, in the museum you can "visit" places that are quite remote from the school of wizards. For example, next to the premises of the "castle" is Harry's closet, in which he lived in the house of the Dursleys in the suburbs of London.

Visitors can also explore the Weasley House, The Burrow, where the knitting needles are knitted, the iron ironing itself, and the dishes washing themselves. The museum also invites you to visit Kosoy Lane, "located" in the capital. In the real world, it is inaccessible to ordinary people, but once in the Leavesden Museum, every visitor will be able to walk past the wizards' shops.

A separate pavilion is the "possession" of the Ministry of Magic. Gringotts Bank, with its indispensable "goblin employees", has not been forgotten either. And in 2015, platform 9 ¾ appeared on the territory of the museum, along with the Hogwarts express train. The locomotive behaves like a real one - beeps, lets off steam. Of course, viewers are invited to walk through the carriages and feel like students of the school, to take photographs.

And yet, most of the museum's territory is precisely places from Hogwarts: Dumbledore's office and potions class, the Gryffindor living room, inside which you can see the figures of students, and at the entrance - a portrait of the Fat Lady. In the open area you can visit the Forbidden Forest, see Hagrid's motorcycle, the Night Knight bus.

Visitors are guaranteed to dive into the world of Harry Potter for a few hours. And to preserve this feeling, they are offered additional entertainment - for example, try butter beer at the Three Broomsticks bar, buy sweets with unpredictable fillings, a magic wand and other souvenirs.

The pandemic has temporarily closed the doors to visitors to the Harry Potter Museum in Leavesden, but tours are scheduled to resume in December 2020. In any case, there are more new events on the calendar - starting in January, for example, the Slytherin House exhibit opens. The studio in Leavesden was not the only place where scenes for the Harry Potter films were filmed. The series owes a considerable number of episodes to the colleges of Oxford, a university that rivals Cambridge for centuries.