Tobercurry (or Tubbercurry) stood in for the fictional town of
Carricklea in the west of Ireland. Fans of the show will recognise
Teeling Street, the main thoroughfare – make like Marianne and Con
in the New Year’s Eve scene and drop into Brennan’s Bar. Nearby,
the town’s Killoran’s Bar and St John the Evangelist Church also
make an appearance.

Stay: The Granary
at Quarryfield Farm

The scenes when Marianne and Connell’s secret romance plays out
between tufted dunes were filmed on Sligo‘s
windswept northern coast. Part of the Wild Atlantic Way, Streedagh
Strand is a narrow, golden stretch that arcs from Streedagh Point
to Connor’s Island, and is the site where three ships from the
Spanish Armada became grounded in 1588.

Stay: The Hide

Rooney is an alumna of Trinity College
Dublin, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that a good chunk of the
novel plays out on campus. You’ll spot Connell studying in the
brutalist Berkeley Library and Marianne in the Marsh’s Library,
while the university’s Parliament Square, cricket pitches and
Robert Emmet Theatre also pop up in the TV drama.

Stay: The Alex

While most student digs would barely scrape a health-and-safety
inspection, we’d happily curate a Pinterest board dedicated to the
faded grandeur of Marianne’s Georgian home in Dublin 4. It’s
privately owned so you can’t go inside, but wandering among the
street of 19th-century red-brick houses, each buffered by a fringe
of greenery, is as good a time as any to daydream.

Stay: Pembroke Townhouse

A half-hour drive from Dublin, this Palladian-style,
single-storey hunting lodge doubles up as Marianne’s affluent
family house. Originally part of the Powerscourt Estate in
Enniskerry, it has its own paddock, in which Marianne whiles away
her summer break. It’s privately owned so not open for viewing, but
we recommend immersing yourself in the natural beauty of the
surrounding area.

Stay: This off-grid tiny house in the Wicklow
Mountains.

Marianne’s fictional family villa may have been in Trieste, but
the series’ production team happened upon this country home near
Sant’Oreste as a stand-in. “Happened upon” is a bit of a fib; this
place was used in Eat, Pray, Love too. An hour’s drive north of
Rome, it’s available to rent through Airbnb.
While here, the couple’s shopping trip takes them to the hilltop
town of Stimigliano, where they stop in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele
for gelato.

Stay: Il Casale, Tenuta di Verzano

Not all the Italian scenes were filmed in Italy. Home to a
transplant of Francis Bacon’s South Kensington studio, Hugh Lane
Gallery stood in for Venice’s Guggenheim Museum – a set was built
in the gallery’s atrium especially for Normal People.

Stay: Kelly’s Hotel

On the Gulf of Bothnia, near the
Sweden–Finland
border, snow-dusted Luleå was used as the backdrop for Marianne’s
Erasmus stint abroad. That scene when Marianne walks on the frozen
Baltic Sea is, in fact, less strange than
fiction – each winter, this stretch of water freezes so thick that
residents often skate to nearby islands. Not all of the Sweden
scenes were filmed on Scandi turf, however. Marianne’s dinner with
Lukas was shot in Dublin’s Forest Avenue and the city’s Fumbally
café is her go-to for coffee (the snow in these scenes was fake
FYI).

Stay: Treehotel