Ripley Filming Locations: From New York to the Amalfi Coast

Netflix have just released a new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic thriller The Talented Mr Ripley, for the small screen. Starring Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley, Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf, and Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood, it was shot in black and white in such locations as New York, Rome, and Venice.

It follows the story of down-on-his-luck grifter Tom Ripley who’s sent to Italy to bring a rich shipping magnate’s vagabond son back home. Accepting the job marks the start of Ripley’s descent into deceit, fraud, and murder, but he gets to hang out in some of the world’s most beautiful places along the way.

Ripley’s story starts in New York, where Dick Greenleaf’s father recruits him to go to Italy  (tough gig) and haul back his son so he can get started on a proper job instead of lounging around on the beach all day.

Multiple locations were used around the city, including train scenes, as well as filming at a shipyard (Dickie’s dad is a shipping magnate). One other location we know so far is the James A. Farley Building in Midtown Manhattan, where interior scenes involving Ripley accessing a PO box were filmed. Now a mixed-use structure, back in the 60s when Ripley is set, it was the city’s main United States Postal Service branch. With a façade full of Corinthian columns, if you look above this colonnade you’ll find the USPS’ official creed: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Flights to New York

In the original novel by Patricia Highsmith, Ripley first heads to the fictional coastal town of Mongibello, based on the Amalfi Coast’s very real town of Positano. For this adaptation, the filming crew shifted things further up the coast to the teeny tiny town of Atrani, just 12 minutes by foot from the much more famous Amalfi.

Despite being literally a stone’s throw away, Atrani remains unspoiled and relatively unknown by most. With a population of less than a thousand, it remains one of the last spots on the Amalfi Coast to retain all of its original, traditional charm, with those tiers and tiers of colourful houses creeping down to the Tyrrhenian Sea in a small crack between two steep cliffs. Winding streets. Thirteenth-century baroque churches as ornate as an iced cake. The toll of the bell from a sixteenth-century tower. Un caffè in Piazza Umberto, the town’s main square. There’s none of the glitz to be found elsewhere on the Amalfi Coast, but all of the charm. A little more tired looking, a little less perfect than its neighbours, Atrani feels like real Italy.

If you fancy visiting as a day trip, it’s a really easy walk from Amalfi right along the coast, or if you’re staying in Ravelli (and have some serious thigh muscles), there’s 3km trail that takes you through terraced vineyards and lemon trees – the tricky bit is the approximately 1,500 steep steps you’ll have to negotiate to reach the town itself. If you chicken out, you can take the bus straight from Ravelli instead.

Flights to Naples – the closest airport to the Amalfi Coast

Interior scenes with Ripley were shot in this sober looking Franciscan church and monastery in Naples – sober looking, that is, from the outside. In typical Italian fashion, the second you step through the doors its a sumptuous affair of gilded interiors, frescoes, and paintings.

Alongside the main room, there’s also multiple smaller chapels on either side to explore, each full with even more paintings and frescoes. They really do love a fresco over there. One of the chapels even includes paintings attributed to an 8 year old Luca Giordano, a late-Baroque painter and printmaker who would go on to have success across Italy.

It’s a bit of a walk from Napoli Centrale, the main train station, but you can hop on the metro from here and ride to the Universita stop, which’ll spit you out just around the corner from the church.

Flights to Naples

After finding and befriending Dickie Greenleaf on the Amalfi Coast, Ripley decides to throw the towel in on this business of trying to drag him back to New York and decides to just hang out with him instead (on Dickie’s dime, of course). But you can only lounge around on the beach for so long, and eventually the pair head off to Rome.

In a shot from the trailer, Ripley can be seen on a set of steps leading up to the Hotel Bolivar on Via delle Tre Cannelle. Just off roundabout Largo Magnanapoli, it’s a kilometre from the Colosseum, and about half that to Piazza Venezia where you’ll find the Altare della Patria, also known by locals as ‘the typewriter’ and ‘the wedding cake’. But here’s a cheeky tip from us: just round the corner there’s a secret viewing point over the city with zero crowds. Villa Aldobrandini has a secluded rooftop garden filled with fragments of statues, accessible for free from via Mazzarino, with views over via Nazionale and towards Piazza Venezia, the Church of Saints Dominic and Sixtus, the medieval Torre delle Milizie and the Altare della Patria.

Scenes shot in Rome also include the Palazzo dei Congressi, found a little outside the city centre in the EUR district, famous for being the home of the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana, AKA the Square Colosseum.

Designed in 1942 for the Universal Exposition, a dream of Mussolini’s that never came to be, the Palazzo dei Congressi is a significant example of rationalist architecture. Inside you’ll find works by Gino Severini, a member of the Futurism movement. On the top floor there’s even a hanging terrace and open-air marble amphitheater, with views of both the city and nearby coastline in one. Take the metro’s B line from Termini to EUR Palasport, and you can walk up the impressive Via Cristoforo Colombo.

Back in the Centro Storico, exterior scenes were filmed in the Piazza di Pietra, just off via del Corso and not far from the Pantheon. One of its main features is the remains of the Temple of Hadrian, with one cella wall and eleven columns from the external colonnade surviving today. The rest of its remains have been incorporated into a 17th-century papal palace, now occupied by Rome’s Chamber of Commerce. Piazza di Pietra – that’s Square of Stone – actually gets it name from the stone of the temple used to build it.

Especially gorgeous at night when lit up, you’ll often find the square busy with people enjoying an aperitivo outside Salotto 42, directly opposite the temple.

Flights to Rome

Towards the end of the story, Ripley ends up in dreamy Venice. And what would be the point of filming in La Serenissima without a scene involving the Grand Canal? It’s actually illegal to film here and not include it (probably). Already from the trailer we see a classic shot of Ripley leaning out of a vaporetto (the Venetian equivalent of catching the bus), gondolas and stately palazzos all around him.

Whilst you might fancy a ride in a private water taxi from the airport to your hotel, you’ll have to have pretty deep pockets because it’ll cost you upwards of €100 for the pleasure. The more likely option is to catch one of those vaporetti instead – they’re the cheapest method of getting around, after walking. A 75-minute ticket will set you back a princely sum of €7.50. Save the euros for a gondola trip – unless you take the traghetto instead, which is is basically a gondola, only it’ll take you on a very quick hop from one side of the canal to the other for about €2! Short but sweet.

Another classic shot of Venice that the filming crew utilised for Ripley is the famous view you’ll get upon leaving the train station, Santa Lucia. For some people, this alone makes coming in by train way better than flying in.

Unlike in a lot of other Italian cities where the train station is a little out of the way, and usually in a pretty non descript piazza full of cars and buses, the second you step out of the station here you have no doubt you’re in Venice. It’s a postcard scene: the Grand Canal, gondolas floating by, grand palazzos to the left of you, grand palazzos to the right of you, and smack bang in front of you, the Chiesa di San Simeon Piccolo – one of the last churches to be built in the city.

In another scene, Ripley is seen having a drink with an unnamed-as-of-yet character played by Jon Malkovich in Venice institution, Caffè Florian.

With a prime location in Piazza San Marco, also known as Venice’s living room, Caffe Florian is no stranger to the big screen either – it was used for filming in the previous adaption, The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), as well as Summertime (1955) starring Katherine Hepburn. Said to be the oldest Italian cafe still in use today, it dates way back to 1720 and became famous not only for its coffee but also for its hot chocolate. One of the best spots for people watching on the planet, its visitors book is stuffed with famous names. Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, Grace Kelly, Charlie Chaplin…

Flights to Venice