Where Was Twilight Filmed? Every Major Location Explained

In 2008, the first "Twilight" movie — based on a novel of the same name by Stephenie Meyer — hit theaters, made stars out of the two young leads Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and became one of the biggest young adult sensations in modern cinematic history. The story begins when Stewart's socially awkward teen Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her dad Charlie (Billy Burke), the police chief of the small town; her whole world turns sideways when she meets Edward Cullen (Pattinson), a handsome but mysterious high school student hiding an enormous secret. (He's a vampire. That's the secret.)

Across five movies — "Twilight" and its "Twilight Saga" sequels "New Moon," "Eclipse," and parts one and two of "Breaking Dawn" — we watch as Bella and Edward navigate the difficulties of a relationship between a human teenager and a century-old vampire masquerading as a regular teenager, dealing with all kinds of problems along the way. Not only does Edward constantly endanger Bella simply by being near her, but when Edward disappears during "New Moon" to keep Bella "safe," she ends up in an entanglement with her longtime friend and newly transformed shapeshifter Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), who can transform into a wolf at will. So where did the creative team behind "The Twilight Saga" decide to shoot this fantastical story? A bunch of very gray and rainy places, and also Italy and Brazil.

Out of all the memorable scenes in the first "Twilight" movie (which was directed by Catherine Hardwicke), perhaps the most talked about, after all these years, is the baseball scene. After Edward brings Bella back to the luxurious Cullen family home to meet his beautiful and undead family — his adoptive parents Carlisle and Esme (Peter Facinelli and Elizabeth Reaser) and "siblings" Rosalie Hale (Nikki Reed), Jasper Hale (Jackson Rathbone), Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene), and Emmett Cullen (Kellan Lutz) — she joins them for a baseball game, and to say it's wild is a severe understatement. 

For reasons that are, quite frankly, never made clear, the Cullens love dressing up in old-timey baseball outfits and having a catch, but because they're vampires, they do it super fast. Unfortunately, this absolutely ridiculous exploit is cut short when a band of roving vampires, including James (Cam Gigandet), encounter them and are immediately entranced by the particularly delicious scent of Bella's blood.

All of this was shot at Silver Falls State Park in Oregon (south of Salem and Portland), a perfect example of the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. If you feel so inclined, I guess you can head there to recreate the baseball scene yourself. (Old-timey outfits are not included.)

When Bella moves to Forks, she enrolls at the aptly-named Forks High School and becomes an object of fascination amongst her fellow students, including the chatty Jessica Stanley (Anna Kendrick in an early role) and Mike Newton (Michael Welch), the latter of whom immediately develops a crush on Bella. Unfortunately for Mike, Bella's attention is directed right at Edward Cullen, but to say he doesn't seem to like her is ... yet another understatement. The two officially meet when Bella walks into her chemistry class and takes the empty seat next to Edward, at which point he actively recoils; in fact, Robert Pattinson plays the scene as if Edward is about to blow chunks all over Bella. We later learn that it's because Bella's blood has an especially delectable scent, and Edward is overcome with bloodlust at the mere smell of her, but honestly, the whole thing is extremely funny without that context.

Fans of the "Twilight" movies might be surprised to learn that, even though Forks High School is a real school, the production elected to shoot at Kalama High School in Washington State (just across the border from Portland, Oregon). Kalama High School, home to "the Chinooks," is a fully functional high school to this day, which means that high schoolers might be sitting in that same chemistry lab as you read this. Something to think about.

One year after "Twilight" hit theaters and transformed the popular books into a bestselling film franchise, the first sequel "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" came out, switching up the director with Chris Weitz replacing Catherine Hardwicke. That's not the only big change, though; after shooting most of the first movie in Washington and Oregon, the second film moved proceedings to Vancouver and other locations in Canada's British Columbia. This isn't a totally surprising change on a surface level, because the weather is very similar to the Pacific Northwest, and weather patterns are actually a huge part of "The Twilight Saga" specifically, because the vampiric Cullen family seeks out gray and cloudy climates so that they're not outed as undead bloodsuckers by the sun. (The sun doesn't melt or kill them in this universe but simply reveals that their skin sparkles, and if you didn't know this detail already, no, I am not making that up.)

Vancouver was used as a filming location once again for the franchise's third movie, "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" and was used sparingly in the saga's two-part final installment "Breaking Dawn" as well (as to why it was spared, I'll circle back to that in just a bit). Clearly, the Canadian city and its surrounding locales in the province of British Columbia was a pretty good stand-in for the North American Pacific Northwest, as it would be hard for anyone but the most eagle-eyed fans to catch the difference.

At the beginning of "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," Edward invites Bella over to the Cullen family home to celebrate her birthday ... but when she gets a paper cut, Jasper, a young and less-controlled vampire, goes absolutely bonkers and tries to kill her, at which point Edward intervenes by throwing Bella into a glass table. (The table thing is technically an accident, but still.) Edward, who realizes that his love for Bella can't outweigh the fact that he's actively endangering her life all the time, ends their relationship and the Cullens leave Forks, sending Bella into a severe depressive spiral.

Bella ultimately realizes that, if she performs risky stunts like cliff jumping or motorcycle riding, she can see glimpses of Edward begging her to stop, so with the aid of her old friend Jacob Black, she starts getting more and more daring. After a cliff jump with Jacob, Edward's sister Alice, who has the vampire gift of clairvoyance, travels back to Forks to tell Bella that Edward thinks Bella is dead and is planning to go to Italy and expose his sparkling vampire chest, which will lead the ancient vampiric council known as the Volturi to kill him. Bella and Alice take it upon themselves to go to Brazil and deal with the situation directly, and the real town of Volterra — where this all takes place in the book — is represented by Montepulciano, a town in the Tuscan region of Italy. The central action takes place in the Piazza Grande, and Montepulciano's Palazzo Communale is also prominently featured in the Italian scenes. 

After keeping Bella at arm's length throughout all of "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" until she agrees to marry him, Edward finally gets his happily-ever-after when he and Bella get married directly after their high school graduation in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1." The wedding takes place in Forks (though it was shot in Squamish, British Columbia), and shortly thereafter, the newlyweds head to Brazil for their honeymoon, with Edward announcing that Carlisle happens to own a private island named for Esme off the coast of the South American country. 

Thanks to his sheer brute strength, Edward is apprehensive about consummating the marriage while Bella is still a human — she keeps begging him to transform her into a vampire and he keeps refusing — and when they finally get down to business, his fears are proven correct in the form of a fully broken bed and bruises all over Bella. After two weeks, Bella gets sick while they're still away and realizes something startling: she must be pregnant. All of the honeymoon scenes were shot in Brazil between Rio de Janeiro and a small municipality in Rio called Paraty, and you can tell; the beach scenes are pretty clearly real and not computer-generated.

Throughout the last two films in "The Twilight Saga" — especially the first part of "Breaking Dawn" — the main characters spend quite a lot of time inside for one specific reason. After Bella and Edward's discovery during their honeymoon, Carlisle, a doctor, is treating his newly minted daughter-in-law throughout her pregnancy, only to discover that the fetus is growing at a dangerously fast pace. When Jacob goes to the Cullen house to figure out what's going on with Bella, he's revolted to see her in a terrible state, barely able to keep food down as the apparently dangerous half-human, half-vampire fetus wrecks her body; eventually, Bella has to drink human blood in order to stay even slightly healthy until her harrowing birth scene. (Edward performs a C-section — with his teeth — and turns Bella into a vampire just as she starts to bleed out and die.)

After filming mostly in British Columbia for the two previous films, production moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana for the lion's share of the interior shots in both "Breaking Dawn" films — Louisiana offers large tax credits for productions filmed in the state, so it's easy to assume that's why. Ultimately, a mix of exteriors around Baton Rouge and green screens were used to finish the film franchise, bringing "The Twilight Saga" to a close after a four-year journey that brought the cast to multiple continents. All five "Twilight" movies are streaming on Peacock now.