The Wonder filming locations span two very different parts of Ireland: a working aircraft hangar on Dublin’s outskirts, and a handful of sites scattered across County Wicklow. Sebastián Lelio’s 2022 Netflix drama needed a landscape that felt both beautiful and faintly unsettling, and Wicklow’s bogland gave the production exactly that.
Unlike many film location guides, this one comes with a catch worth knowing upfront. The film’s most striking setting, the isolated O’Donnell cottage, was never a real building. It existed for seven weeks on the open bog, then vanished once filming wrapped.
This guide walks through every real location behind The Wonder, from Weston Airport’s hangar to the exact stretch of Wicklow bog where that cottage briefly stood, along with what’s genuinely there to visit today and how to plan a day trip around it from Dublin.
Table of Contents
Where The Wonder Was Filmed: Dublin and County Wicklow’s Starring Role
The Wonder was shot almost entirely in two places: a working aircraft hangar on the edge of Dublin, and a scattering of sites across County Wicklow, roughly forty-five minutes to an hour south of the capital. Production ran for around seven weeks from mid-August 2021, making it, according to on-set reporting, the first Netflix production shot entirely within the Republic of Ireland.
Dublin’s Weston Airport Hangar
Most of the film’s interior scenes were shot inside a hangar at Weston Airport, a general aviation airfield on Dublin’s western outskirts. Production designer Grant Montgomery built the O’Donnell house interior there as a full-scale set, which meant the crew could control light and weather completely, a useful feature given how unpredictable an Irish autumn shoot can be.
County Wicklow’s Rural Backdrop
Once the crew moved outdoors, County Wicklow took over almost entirely. Often nicknamed the Garden of Ireland, the county’s blend of open mountains, bogs and forests lets the production find a single stretch of countryside that could plausibly be the Irish midlands, even though the real midlands look quite different. You can get a fuller sense of the region’s range in ConnollyCove’s guide to the Wicklow Mountains, which covers the folklore that threads through this landscape.
Why Wicklow Keeps Getting Cast as Somewhere Else
Wicklow’s appeal to filmmakers isn’t new. Its proximity to Dublin’s production infrastructure, combined with landscapes that can double for everywhere from famine-era Ireland to fantasy kingdoms, has made it one of the most filmed counties on the island. ConnollyCove’s broader roundup of movies filmed in Ireland covers several other productions that made the same choice, for many of the same reasons.
Inside the O’Donnell House: Sally Gap and the Wicklow Bog
The exterior of the O’Donnell family cottage, the film’s most visually striking location, was built from nothing on the open bog at Sally Gap and taken down once filming finished. Nothing you can visit today is the “real” cottage, because it never existed as a permanent structure.
Building a Cottage on the Bog
Sally Gap is a mountain crossroads inside Wicklow Mountains National Park, roughly 45 kilometres from Dublin at around 498 metres elevation, where the R759 and R115 meet. The production chose this spot specifically because the bogland there is flat, exposed and largely free of modern intrusions like pylons or roads, which made it easier to convince audiences they were watching 1862 rather than 2021. The crew constructed a rough-hewn cottage on the open bog, then surrounded it with peat and heather to make it look as though it had always been there.
The Bog as More Than Scenery
Wicklow’s bogland isn’t just visually striking; it’s ecologically and historically significant in its own right. Irish peat bogs formed over thousands of years and were, for much of the 19th century, a genuine lifeline: they provided fuel for families who had little else, particularly in the decades either side of the Great Famine, which the film’s story is set in. That historical weight is part of why the location works so well dramatically. ConnollyCove’s guide to the Great Famine’s impact on Irish identity goes further into the period the film is set against, including how food scarcity reshaped rural communities like the fictional one in The Wonder.
“Sally Gap looks empty until you’ve stood in it,” says Ciaran Connolly, Founder of ConnollyCove. “That emptiness is exactly why Lelio chose it. You can’t fake the flatness of that light, or the way the bog seems to watch you back.”
Red Cross and Ryan’s Spirit Grocery
A short drive from Sally Gap, the village of Redcross provided the film’s other key set. The production transformed a modern café there into Ryan’s Spirit Grocery, the combined shop, bar and lodgings where Nurse Lib Wright stays during her time observing Anna O’Donnell. Unlike the Sally Gap cottage, Redcross is a genuine village you can drive through today, though the café’s film-era signage and dressing were removed once shooting wrapped.
Hollywood, County Wicklow: The Village Behind the Joke
Most of the film’s outdoor rural scenes were shot in and around the real village of Hollywood, County Wicklow, whose hillside sign inspired Florence Pugh to post a viral Instagram joke about swapping LA for somewhere greener. Unlike the Sally Gap set, Hollywood is a genuine, permanent village.
A Different Kind of Hollywood
During filming, Pugh posted a photo contrasting her usual Los Angeles surroundings with the Wicklow village, joking about “less traffic, greener hills, great Guinness.” The comparison works because it’s real: Hollywood, County Wicklow, has its own hillside sign, considerably smaller and considerably damper than its Californian namesake, and the coincidence of the name has made it a minor point of interest for visitors long before The Wonder arrived.
Hollywood’s Wider Film History
Hollywood and its surrounding countryside had already appeared in other Irish productions before The Wonder, part of a longer pattern of Wicklow doubling for period settings across Irish cinema. If you’re building a filming-locations trip, ConnollyCove’s guide to Game of Thrones locations covers a similar pattern in Northern Ireland, worth comparing if you’re deciding how much of a “film locations tour” to build into an Irish itinerary.
The Glendalough Connection
Hollywood sits close to Glendalough, the sixth-century monastic site founded by St Kevin, and the two places share more than geography. St Kevin’s Way, a historic pilgrim route, runs between Hollywood and Glendalough, tracing the same ground the saint is said to have walked over 1,400 years ago. ConnollyCove’s Glendalough guide covers the monastic ruins, round tower and visitor centre in full, and the official Heritage Ireland page for Glendalough has current opening hours and access details if you’re planning to combine both stops.
Was The Wonder Based on a True Story?
The Wonder is fiction, but it’s built directly on a real 19th-century phenomenon known as the “fasting girls,” in which a number of young women and girls, mostly across Britain and Ireland, were reported to survive for extended periods without food, often framed by their communities as miraculous or saintly. Emma Donoghue’s novel draws on this documented pattern rather than any single case.
The film sets its story roughly a decade after the Great Famine, a detail that matters more than it might first appear. Communities that had lived through mass starvation just years earlier would have had a very particular, very raw relationship with questions of fasting, faith and survival, which is part of why the setting carries so much weight. Readers wanting the fuller historical context behind that period can find it in ConnollyCove’s guide to the Great Famine’s impact on Irish identity.
Planning a Visit: Wicklow and Dublin for Film Location Fans
You can visit almost every real location from The Wonder in a single day trip from Dublin, though it’s worth knowing upfront that the film’s most iconic set, the O’Donnell cottage, no longer exists in any form. Wicklow rewards a slower pace rather than a checklist approach.
Getting There and Around
Sally Gap, Redcross and Hollywood are all within roughly an hour’s drive of Dublin city centre, though they’re spread across different parts of the county rather than clustered together, so a car gives you far more flexibility than public transport. The Military Road, built in 1798 and running from Sally Gap down toward Glendalough, is one of the more atmospheric routes to drive between sites; ConnollyCove’s guide to scenic drives in Ireland covers this stretch in more detail, including where mobile signal drops out along the way.
Respecting a Fragile Landscape
Sally Gap sits within a protected area, and the bogland that made the film’s setting so visually striking is genuinely fragile: peat takes centuries to form and is easily damaged by foot traffic that strays off marked paths. If you’re visiting to see where the O’Donnell cottage once stood, stick to the roadside viewpoints and existing trails rather than walking out across the bog itself.
Building It Into a Wider Wicklow Trip
Since there’s no standing film set to visit, most travellers pair a stop at Sally Gap with the county’s more permanent attractions. Glendalough is the obvious anchor point, and Powerscourt Estate, with its gardens and Ireland’s highest waterfall, sits close enough to add on the same day. For a broader sense of what else the county offers, ConnollyCove’s Co Wicklow travel guide and County Wicklow guide both cover the wider region beyond the film locations themselves.
Basing Yourself in Dublin
Most visitors base themselves in Dublin and treat Wicklow as a day trip, which works well given the driving distances involved. ConnollyCove’s Dublin travel guide and things to do in Dublin cover the city side of the trip, useful if you’re splitting your time between Weston Airport and the capital’s more conventional attractions.
The Wonder in Context: Ireland’s Storytelling Tradition
The Wonder’s central tension, between faith, fasting and survival, sits inside a much older Irish tradition of oral storytelling, where extraordinary claims about ordinary people were passed on as fact long before anyone thought to film them. That tradition runs through everything from Irish seanfhocail to the island’s Celtic mythology.
ConnollyCove, the Ireland-based travel and culture platform, covers this storytelling thread across its Irish language and mythology content, including its guide to Irish proverbs and its guide to the Tuatha Dé Danann, Ireland’s mythological pantheon, whose own stories blur the same line between the miraculous and the mundane that drives The Wonder’s plot. Travellers drawn to the film’s atmosphere often find they’re drawn to this wider tradition too, and Ireland’s Irish farewell blessings, which ConnollyCove has documented in full, carry a similarly weighty relationship with faith, mortality and community.
Where to Eat and Stay Near the Filming Locations
Hollywood village itself has very little in the way of services, so most visitors base their food and lodging in Laragh, the small village closest to Glendalough and a natural hub for the whole area.
Laragh: The Practical Base
Laragh is where most people visiting Sally Gap, Hollywood or Glendalough end up stopping for food, since it sits roughly between all three. The Wicklow Heather, a long-established restaurant on the Glendalough road, serves traditional Irish dishes built around locally sourced lamb and produce, and it’s popular enough with hikers coming off the Wicklow Way that booking ahead is worth doing in the busier months. Lynham’s, a village pub in Laragh, offers a more casual option for anyone wanting a pint and pub food after a day outdoors.
Hollywood Village Itself
Hollywood’s small size means it has limited standalone dining, and most visitors treat it as a quick photo stop on the way between Sally Gap and Glendalough rather than somewhere to plan a meal around. That’s worth knowing before you go, since arriving expecting a full village centre will leave you disappointed. Laragh, ten to fifteen minutes away by car, is the more realistic base for anything beyond a coffee.
Staying Overnight in Wicklow
If you’d rather not do the full round trip from Dublin in a single day, Wicklow has no shortage of guesthouses and small hotels clustered around Laragh, Roundwood and the wider Glendalough valley, many aimed squarely at hikers using the Wicklow Way. Staying overnight also means you can catch Glendalough or Sally Gap in the early morning, before coach tours arrive and while the light is at its best for photographs. ConnollyCove’s Wicklow National Park guide covers the wider accommodation picture across the park in more detail, including which villages sit closest to which trailheads.
Current Conditions and Seasonal Considerations
Wicklow’s weather changes fast regardless of season, so the best time to visit depends more on what you want from the trip than any single “ideal” month. Sally Gap, in particular, sits at nearly 500 metres, which means conditions there can differ sharply from those in Dublin on the same day.
Weather and What to Pack
Irish weather is famously changeable, and Sally Gap’s elevation makes it more exposed than most of Wicklow, so pack layers and a waterproof jacket, whatever the forecast says. Late summer brings purple heather across the bog and the longest daylight hours for photography, while autumn gives the landscape a moodier, greyer tone closer to the film’s own atmosphere. Winter visits are possible and often quieter, but daylight is short, and the crossroads can be genuinely bleak in poor weather, so check conditions before setting out.
Access and Parking at Sally Gap
The roads around Sally Gap are narrow, and roadside parking is limited to a handful of pull-in spots rather than a formal car park, so arriving outside peak midday hours makes finding space considerably easier. Mobile signal drops out across large stretches of this route, so it’s worth downloading maps in advance rather than relying on a live connection once you’re on the Military Road.
Booking Ahead for Glendalough
Glendalough’s car parks fill quickly in the middle of the day during spring and summer, and the visitor centre can get busy with coach groups, so an early morning or late afternoon visit tends to be far more peaceful. For current opening hours, parking arrangements and any seasonal closures, the official Heritage Ireland page for Glendalough is the most reliable source to check before you travel, since these details do shift throughout the year.
Conclusion
The Wonder’s most memorable location was never a place at all. It was a cottage built for seven weeks on the Sally Gap bog and dismantled once the cameras stopped rolling, which makes visiting Wicklow today less about retracing a film set and more about understanding why the production chose this landscape in the first place. Between Sally Gap, Redcross, Hollywood and Glendalough, a single day trip from Dublin covers most of it. Explore more of ConnollyCove’s guides to County Wicklow and Ireland’s film locations to plan the rest of your trip.
FAQs
Where exactly was The Wonder filmed?
The Wonder was filmed primarily in Dublin and County Wicklow. Interior scenes were shot in a hangar at Weston Airport on Dublin’s outskirts, while the O’Donnell cottage exterior was built from scratch on the bog at Sally Gap. Additional scenes were filmed around Redcross village and Hollywood, County Wicklow.
Is the O’Donnell cottage still standing?
No. The cottage was a temporary set built specifically for filming and was removed once production wrapped in 2021. Visitors can see the Sally Gap location where it once stood, but there’s no structure left to visit.
Is the village in The Wonder a real place?
The village itself is fictional, though it was constructed from several real Wicklow locations stitched together, including Redcross for the shop and lodgings, and Hollywood and Sally Gap for the surrounding countryside. No single existing village matches the film’s setting exactly.
Is The Wonder based on a true story?
The film is fiction, but it draws on a documented 19th-century phenomenon known as the “fasting girls,” in which several young women were reported, and often celebrated, for surviving extended periods without food. Emma Donoghue’s novel is inspired by this pattern rather than any one confirmed case.
