Tolkien is a biopic opening for Fox in theaters on May 10th, 2019. As part of the junket experience in London, England, Collider was invited to take part in an Oxford tour highlighting not only filming locations used in the movie, but where the genius who inspired the film and created The Lord of the Rings franchise spent the majority of his life.

As highlighted in Tolkien, the man, the myth, the legend took his undergrad at Exeter College (which you can see in several of our photos), before moving on to study at Pembroke College and eventually teaching at Merton College. Photos of Merton are also featured. Merton is a particularly important piece of the Tolkien mythos as he was working there when he began writing The Hobbit and completed The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It may also be worth noting that Merton College is considered to be the most academic of all colleges at Oxford University. It was there Tolkien had an office which overlooked the gardens. You can also see some photos of the iconic Stone Table in the Merton College gardens where Professor Tolkien was known to hold meetings and lectures with his students and contemporaries. I, personally, can think of more than one stone table or pillar from Middle-Earth this setting may have inspired.

The Eagle and Child pub was, famously, the meeting place of Tolkien’s writing group “The Inklings” (who count Chronicles of Narnia scribe C.S. Lewis amongst their ranks), and you will also see photos of the world-famous Bodleian Library. Not only is the Bodleian an inspiration for several of Tolkien’s in-universe buildings, and famous Oxford University site, but it stood in as the filming location for The Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library in the Harry Potter franchise of movies.

Many of Tolkien’s Oxford sequences were shot on location at Oxford University, even if different buildings stood in for alternate uses. For example—this is not a spoiler!—there is a fencing sequence which comes toward the middle of the film which was shot in the Dining Hall at Exeter College. To our knowledge, it is atypical for fencing to take place in this room when cameras are absent.

Check out a ton of pictures below.