Where Was The Shining Filmed? The Real Overlook Hotel Location Explained

Stanley Kubrick took inspiration from a few real and fictional locations for his 1980 adaptation of The Shining, but he mostly filmed the Overlook Hotel in one place, far from where the movie was set. While the movie’s Colorado resort is not a real place, author Stephen King based the Overlook on the Stanley Hotel, where he had once stayed (and where the 1997 miniseries version of The Shining was shot). For Kubrick’s movie, another hotel was employed as a stand-in for the exterior of the Overlook while its interiors were based in part on those of the Ahwahnee Hotel in California’s Yosemite National Park, plus other similar establishments.