"White Lotus" Season 2 Filming Locations You Can Visit in Real Life

Much of the show is set in the hilltop resort town of Taormina, located near Mt. Etna and just up the coast from Catania, Sicily’s second-largest city. Shots of tourist-packed streets, complete with charming cobblestones and terracotta-hued buildings, were filmed in Taormina’s center, as were those scenes of Lucia and Mia walking arm-in-arm and stumbling into high-end boutiques to make the most of their newfound windfall. And Taormina’s ancient Greek Theatre makes a cameo appearance in episode two, when Albie, Bert, and Dominic Di Grasso visit (and bring Portia along to escape her confinement at the hotel).

The heart of the action—and arguably the main character of the show—is the high-end hotel where the show is set. In Season 1, the cast and crew filmed on location at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, and Season 2 brought them to The San Domenico Palace in Taormina, another Four Seasons hotel. You can get the full White Lotus experience by staying at the hotel—though you’ll also need the White Lotus budget to match.

One of eight famed late Baroque towns in southeastern Sicily’s Val di Noto (and part of the collective UNESCO World Heritage Site), Noto is known for its grand architecture and 17th-century history. In The White Lotus, it’s also a day-trip destination for Harper and Daphne, before they end up staying for the night (and accidentally kicking off much of the season’s drama in the process). To soak up the town’s beauty for yourself, go on a tour of Noto’s highlights—and don’t leave before you try the Chef’s Table–approved gelato at Caffè Sicilia, too.

Speaking of Harper and Daphne’s overnight Noto stay—the Villa Tasca, which Daphne books after supposedly seeing it in Architectural Digest, is where they spend the night. It’s not hard to see why Daphne was drawn to it: The neoclassical villa boasts five centuries of history, as well as immaculate gardens, a pool, lavish interior murals, and other spectacular features. The only catch? In real life, the Villa Tasca is not actually in Noto, but just outside Sicily’s capital city of Palermo.

Mt. Etna—Europe’s most active volcano—dominates eastern Sicily’s skyline, and it makes several cameo appearances in The White Lotus: first as a looming, smoldering presence and then—once the drama heightens—as a fire-spitting silhouette that lights up the night sky. One benefit of the volcano is its fertile, mineral-rich soil, and the Etna DOC is home to some of Sicily’s finest wineries. Etna Winery plays host to Harper, Daphne, Ethan, and Cameron (and is where Harper gets wildly drunk after learning about Ethan and Cameron’s possible infidelity), and you can visit, too (or take a tour of several of the region’s best wineries). Just go easy on those pours.

In the latter half of Season 2, much of the drama shifts to Palermo, when Tanya accompanies Quentin and his friends to his lavish villa for what she is told will be an innocent escape and party. Its gaudy glamor is the ideal backdrop for those debauched scenes—but in reality, the Villa Elena is actually in Noto, not Palermo. Formerly a 17th-century monastery, the villa was reborn under the hands of designer Jacques Garcia, and is no less opulent in real life.

Though we never see the characters visit Isola Bella—a small island off the coast of Taormina, which is technically connected to the mainland via a narrow sandbank—the landmark has a recurring presence throughout the series. In episode four, it serves as foreshadowing, when Quentin tells Tanya about the Swedish matriarch who lived in the villa—and her death at the hands of local mafiosos. And after Ethan tells Daphne that he thinks Cameron had cheated on her, the two walk across the sandbank towards the island in a scene that’s laced with ambiguity. To see it for yourself (and soak up the best views), book a combination tour and boat trip.

Season 2 of The White Lotus begins with a beach scene where Daphne discovers a body floating in the sea, which kicks off its murder mystery. But that sandy beach—which the characters also periodically escape to throughout the series—is not actually near Taormina’s San Domenico Palace, but is rather in the city of Cefalù, located on Sicily’s northern coast. As director Mike White and producer Dave Bernad have noted, the beach near Taormina is rocky, and just didn’t quite fit the vision for those climactic scenes.