Where was The Gentlemen Season 2 filmed? Grand Hotel Majestic and Villa Rusconi-Clerici on Lake Maggiore

The first season of The Gentlemen was contained within a Gloucestershire manor and its grounds: an accidental duke, a cannabis farm hidden beneath the lawns, and the Glass family running the show. Season two, released by Netflix on 3 September 2026, broadens the playing field. Eddie Horniman and Susie Glass expand their business into Northern Italy, and Lake Maggiore, along its Piedmontese shore, provides the backdrop for this expansion. Two addresses account for most of the Italian scenes: an 1870 palace and a late 19th-century villa, both located in Verbania. Here is where they are, and what was filmed there.

Grand Hotel Majestic in Pallanza: the wedding and the crew headquarters

Opened in 1870 as the Grand Hotel Pallanza at the initiative of hotelier George Seyschab, and built in just fourteen months, the Majestic forms the grand white façade of the Borromean Gulf. It was in its Belle Époque salons and on its colonnaded terrace that the production filmed the season’s wedding sequence, and it served as the base for the crew during their two weeks in Italy. Today, the hotel features 80 rooms and suites, most with lake views, a wellness centre with an indoor pool, a tennis court, a park planted with palm trees, and a small private beach with a pontoon. It is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World.

Three dining venues share the property: La Beola for gourmet cuisine, Il Portico beneath the colonnade, and La Terrazza bar for drinks facing the islands. For viewers of the series, the appeal of the Majestic lies in the fact that it has not been altered: what you see on screen is the hotel just as you can book it, without added studio sets, a rarity for a production of this scale.

Villa Rusconi-Clerici: Bella’s Italian residence, and a newly built jetty for the series

Just a few hundred metres from the Majestic, along the Pallanza lakefront, Villa Rusconi-Clerici is an eclectic late 19th-century palazzo featuring a yellow façade, neo-Baroque details and a grand wrought-iron staircase. It was built by industrialist Ferdinando Biffi on the site of an earlier villa, Villino Bozzotti, where Hungarian colonel Stefano Türr, a deserter from the Austrian army who became an Italian general and senator, lived after 1859. In season 2, the villa serves as the Italian home of Bella, a new character, and the production had a temporary jetty built in front of the garden to film arrivals by Riva boat, with the Borromean Islands in the background.

The garden was another major factor in the location choice. Originally designed by Türr and later enriched with camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas and magnolias from the nearby Rovelli nursery, a leading Italian reference for acid-loving plants, it cascades down in terraces to the water’s edge. The villa is not a hotel: the Rusconi-Clerici counts, who succeeded the Biffi family, open it for weddings, receptions and corporate events hosting 50 to 200 guests beneath a wrought-iron pavilion, complete with vaulted cellars and original kitchens for late-night gatherings. While you cannot stay overnight here, it is available for hire.

Around Pallanza: the church, the quay and the Mottarone road

The wedding ceremony itself was filmed at San Leonardo church on the Pallanza waterfront, dressed up with flowers and olive trees for the occasion. The quay and the statue column of San Dazio, just a short walk away, feature in the speedboat arrivals, while the scenic Mottarone mountain road, separating Lake Maggiore from Lake Orta, plays host to one of the season’s most suspenseful scenes. Everything is concentrated within a radius of just a few kilometres, allowing the Italian leg of the shoot to be wrapped up in about a fortnight. Kaya Scodelario, who plays Susie Glass, described a “magnificent” shoot imbued with a “magical” energy, featuring a “happy” Guy Ritchie cycling between takes.

And in England: Badminton House, Loseley Park and Guy Ritchie’s estate

Halstead Manor remains Badminton House in Gloucestershire, home to the Dukes of Beaufort on a 52,000-acre estate previously seen in Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte; the interiors were filmed at Loseley Park in Surrey, a 1,400-acre family-owned estate. Guy Ritchie also opened up his own Ashcombe estate in Wiltshire and its private airfield for the aviation scenes. Salisbury Cathedral, Swakeleys House in Ickenham and the Greenwich Peninsula complete the list. Explore hotel news in Italy and our guide to hotels in TV series and films on La Revue des Hôtels.

Our perspective

Today, television series are doing for the Italian lakes what guidebooks did a century ago: Como had its films, and Maggiore now has its series. The choice is spot on, because the Majestic and Villa Rusconi-Clerici embody the very essence of The Gentlemen: an inherited luxury, slightly faded, where new money comes to buy respectability. For travellers, the address to note is the Majestic, the only one of the two where you can actually sleep, with its prime season being April and May when the gulf’s camellias and azaleas are in bloom, rather than the summer when the shores fill up. A tip: request a high-floor lake-view room, and book the boat crossing to Isola Bella straight from the hotel’s pontoon·it is the very angle the series films from the water.

Practical information

• Grand Hotel Majestic · Via Vittorio Veneto 32, Verbania-Pallanza · grandhotelmajestic.it
• Villa Rusconi-Clerici · Via Vittorio Veneto 12-16, Verbania-Pallanza · visits and venue hire by appointment · villarusconiclerici.it
• Best time to visit · April and May for camellias and azaleas, September for the light
• Watch the series · The Gentlemen season 2, on Netflix