The Walk of Shame Scene: What Actually Happened on Dubrovnik's Jesuit Stairs

If you ask anyone in Dubrovnik about Game of Thrones filming, they'll bring up the Walk of Shame before anything else. Not because it's the most famous scene — although it probably is — but because it was the most disruptive. For about three days in October 2014, a big chunk of the Old Town was essentially off-limits, and the whole city was talking about it.

I was here for all of it. Let me tell you what actually went down.

The Stairs

The Jesuit Stairs — Jezuitske stube, as locals call them — are a baroque staircase connecting Gundulićeva Poljana (the market square) to the Jesuit Church of St. Ignatius at the top. They were built in the early 18th century, designed by the same Roman architect who did the Spanish Steps in Rome. And honestly, they give the Spanish Steps a run for their money. They've just never had the same PR team.

The staircase has maybe 100 steps, wide and curved, with walls on both sides. It's naturally cinematic. When the HBO location scouts came to Dubrovnik for Season 2, they flagged these stairs immediately — but they didn't end up using them until Season 5 for Cersei's famous walk.

What the Filming Was Actually Like

Production took over the area around the stairs for the better part of three days. They blocked off the streets, put up barriers, and hired a few hundred local extras to play the crowd jeering at Cersei. If you lived in Dubrovnik in 2014, you probably knew someone who was in that scene.

The shoot started early each morning — around 5 or 6 AM — to get the soft light before the sun came over the eastern walls. They'd rehearse the walk, set up the camera rigging (they used a Steadicam following behind and a crane shot from above), and then go for takes.

The streets were wet. They kept hosing down the stone to get that specific look — grey, heavy, miserable. That's a detail people don't realize. If you watch the scene, everything looks damp, but it wasn't raining. They did that on purpose.

Lena Headey was there in person for the close-ups — her face, her reactions, the tears. But the full-body nude shots were done by her body double, Rebecca Van Cleave, and they digitally composited Headey's face onto the performance in post-production. That was pretty well-known at the time, but people still ask about it on tours.

The Local Reaction

Look, Dubrovnik has a complicated relationship with GoT filming. The show brought incredible tourism — we went from a cruise ship stop to a global destination almost overnight. But the filming itself was disruptive. Streets closed. Noise. Residents being told they couldn't leave through their own front doors for hours at a time.

The Walk of Shame was the peak of that tension. Some locals were annoyed, some were excited. A few people I know made decent money as extras (around €50-80 per day, if I remember correctly). One neighbor told me she watched from her window and kept getting told to close her shutters because they were in frame.

Overall, though? We got over it fast. By the time Season 5 aired and the scene went viral, everyone in town was happy about it. Those stairs went from being a pretty shortcut to being one of the most photographed spots in Croatia.

Visiting the Stairs Today

The Jesuit Stairs are free to visit — they're a public staircase, so you can walk them any time. They're located in the southeastern part of the Old Town, and most people stumble onto them without trying, since the morning market at the bottom of the steps is one of the busiest spots in the city.

A few practical notes:

• Best time for photos: Before 9 AM or after 6 PM. In peak summer, the stairs are constantly full of people between those hours.
• The church at the top is worth a look — it's got beautiful frescoes inside and almost nobody goes in.
• The market at the bottom (Gundulićeva Poljana) is where locals buy produce in the morning. Great for atmosphere.
• For the scene comparison: Stand at the bottom of the stairs and look up. That's the camera angle for the final shot of the walk.

Why This Scene Worked So Well in Dubrovnik

I've thought about this a lot over the years. The Walk of Shame could have been filmed on a set in Belfast. It could have been done anywhere with a staircase and some stone walls. But something about doing it in a real city, with real architecture, with real morning light — it gave the scene a weight that a studio couldn't match.

When you walk down those steps yourself, you feel the history. The stone is worn from centuries of footsteps. The walls are thick and old and they echo. It's not hard to imagine a medieval crowd standing there, judging. That's Dubrovnik's superpower as a filming location — you don't need to try very hard to believe you've gone back in time.