October 6th, 2017

The HBO series Game of Thrones has become a phenomenon, and nowhere is that more evident than in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The city is teeming with tourists eager to get a look into King's Landing, for which Dubrovnik was used. In 2016 more than one million tourists visited, up 12 percent from 2015, and staggering for a city with a population of 42,000. There has been talk of limiting the number of people in the old city to avoid damage. One of the sights the tourist are most eager to see are the 'Shame Steps', used in the episode 'Mother's Mercy' in which Queen Cersei walks down them naked while being pelted and harassed as punishment for her adultery. The scene is supposedly the most expensive in television history, with the costs of shutting down the city for three days of filming at 200,000$. Add to this paying off businesses, hiring 500 extras, and 200 security guards, and the final cost is hefty (though some sources say 200,000$ was the total). It's worth noting that quantifying the price of a scene is difficult. What defines a distinct scene, for example? Should you factor in the salaries of the main characters? Or should the price reflect simply the logistics of the setup and execution? If all salaries are included, Game of Thrones would certainly be...um...dethroned by the Netflix series The Crown, as well as the ER, which both cost 13 million per episode (compared to 10 for Game of Thrones).

Bonus:

The 'Shame Steps' must be having an identity crisis. The 'Walk of Shame' that Cersei is subject to is a common mislabelling of the 'Walk of Atonement', and hence the stairs should be the 'Stairs of Atonement'. Before Game of Thrones overtook Dubrovnik the stairs were usually called the Spanish Steps. This was also a mix up, as the Dubrovnik steps resemble the actual Spanish Steps, in Rome. The true name for the steps, forgotten by most, are the Jesuit Stairs. This is in reference to the Jesuit Church and College located at the top

-E