Where Was Seinfeld Filmed? Every Major Location Explained

If you were to attempt a "Seinfeld" tour of the world, where would it take you? Plenty of fans of the beloved show have made a point to visit its most well-known landmarks, from the diner to the exterior of Jerry's apartment to the original (now replaced) Yankees Stadium. Along the way, they've all made a similar discovery: "Seinfeld" may be one of the most famous shows ever set in New York City, but its East Coast filming locations have greatly changed in the decades since the show debuted, and much of the heart of the show actually lies on the opposite U.S. coast.

"Seinfeld" was created in California just as much as New York, but there are still places you can visit to retrace the chaotic, delightfully morally bankrupt steps of Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George (Jason Alexander), and Kramer (Michael Richards). The parking lots, office buildings, and Chinese restaurants where the gang had their greatest misadventures may not be easy to find today, but some of the real-life inspirations behind the show still draw crowds over 25 years after it reached its end point. Here's everything you need to know about the most classic "Seinfeld" filming locations.

If you've noticed that the city streets Jerry and his friends walk down are often less cluttered and crowded than the New York City you've been to, it's not because things were different in the '90s: It's because the majority of the show wasn't actually filmed in the Big Apple. Instead, the talented team behind the series built their own version of New York City on the CBS Studio Center lot in the Studio City area of L.A.. The historic CBS lot has been around for nearly a century, according to The Studio Tour, and Golden Age television shows like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Gunsmoke," and "Leave it to Beaver" all shot there, as did a number of John Wayne films and Bing Crosby specials.

The "Seinfeld" sets are often mentioned in overviews of the studio history, because several spaces were built for the massively lucrative and popular show. Here's the disorienting part: DVD commentaries and full shooting and setting location lists reveal that even the exterior dialogue scenes from the show seem to have been filmed in L.A., so viewers very rarely see New York at all — despite the fact that "Seinfeld" is one of the most memorable New York-set shows of all time. Whether George is reeling a loaf of rye bread up to his window with a fishing pole or Kramer is swimming in the East River, chances are movie magic was made on the L.A. sets.

It's worth noting that there are reportedly still glimpses of real New York City locations in the series, specifically in establishing shots showing places like the Empire State Building, Sotheby's, and Yankee Stadium. Dozens of apartment building exteriors are featured in the show, and full shooting lists include addresses on Park Avenue, Broadway, Columbus Avenue, Union Square, and more.

According to Bloomberg, almost every New York landmark used for an exterior shot in "Seinfeld" has been replaced by something else in the intervening years, though a few places have capitalized on their connection to the show. When Kramer gets lost in the Lower East Side trying to visit his girlfriend who moved downtown in the season 9 episode "The Maid," he calls the location "the nexus of the universe." Apparently, there's still a Nexus Lounge located in that spot.

The man who reportedly inspired "The Soup Nazi" episode of the show has also been advertising his "Seinfeld" connection for years (the episode was not shot in his restaurant), despite having voiced frustrations with his fictional counterpart's portrayal in the past. The 100-year-old Sardi's Restaurant and the Hell's Kitchen-based Westway Diner are two other institutions related to "Seinfeld" that are still kicking today; the first was featured in the famed episode "The Summer of George," while the second is where Seinfeld and co-creator Larry David first had the idea for the show (and there's a plaque on the wall to prove it).

If there's one "Seinfeld" location that got more screen time than any other (aside from maybe the interior of Jerry's apartment), it was probably the diner where Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer met up in nearly every episode to debrief, debate, and complain about their lives. More often than not, the diner's exterior neon sign just read "RESTAURANT," leaving audiences unsure of its name within the series, but some shots revealed that it was called Monk's Cafe. In real life, though, the exterior shot comes from Tom's Restaurant, which has a long pop culture legacy that stretches back even before the "Seinfeld" days.

Located on Broadway near Morningside Park and Columbia University, Tom's Restaurant has been a fixture in the neighborhood since the late 1940s, according to its Trip Advisor page. Politicians including Barack Obama and John McCain have both spent a good chunk of time at Tom's, according to Obama's former roommate and McCain's daughter, who admitted that her dad geeked out about getting to sit in the "Seinfeld" diner. The locale is also the inspiration behind the catchy and haunting '80s song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega, which has inspired remakes, samples, and interpolations from musicians as wide-ranging as Lil' Kim, Fall Out Boy, and 2Pac.

Before you get your plane tickets booked, though, you should know that the inside of Tom's Restaurant doesn't actually look exactly like the setup on "Seinfeld." That was (you guessed it!) created on the lot in Studio City, but according to an Arizona Daily Star article from 2008, fans from all over the world still make the pilgrimage to Tom's nonetheless.

If the deeply polarizing final episode of "Seinfeld" feels nothing like the show that came before it, that might be partly because it was filmed on a lot that's better known for a different super-rewatchable TV show. According to Cheat Sheet, the episode in which Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer make a pit stop in Massachusetts on their new NBC-sponsored private plane — and pretty much immediately get arrested for being a-holes — was filmed on the set that would eventually become Stars Hollow, Connecticut in "Gilmore Girls."

The mother-daughter comedic drama (which, by the way, I think George Costanza would love) hit the airwaves on a different network two years after "Seinfeld" ended, but you can see glimpses of what the quaint New England town would come to look like in "The Finale." The similarities are especially noticeable when the group cruelly observes an overweight man getting mugged near the gazebo that would be part of the Stars Hollow town center. "Gilmore Girls" wasn't the last show to make use of that set, either: In the darkly comedic stalker thriller "You," Stars Hollow becomes the town in which Joe (Penn Badgley) and Love (Victoria Pedretti) settle down in season 3, and it's also doubled as Rosewood, the fictional town at the heart of "Pretty Little Liars." For all we know, Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, and George are still in jail there to this day.