The Queen’s Gambit, which set data in November as Netflix’s most watched miniseries ever, might need made you interested by Lexington, Kentucky.
That is the place a lot of the coming-of-age story (primarily based on Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel) about troubled chess prodigy Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Pleasure) takes place.
Although scenes have been truly shot in Ontario and Berlin, a number of real-life Lexington companies, neighborhoods, and addresses are featured within the small-screen adaptation.
For followers, the town’s tourism bureau, VisitLEX, has put collectively a information to Queen’s Gambit–associated websites, whereas downtown’s 21c Museum Resort has quickly redecorated a visitor room to replicate the present’s chess theme and mid-Twentieth-century type.
“Lexington could also be identified for the game of kings,” as VisitLEX places it, referring to the area’s horse racing pedigree. However “we’re additionally the house of the game of queens: chess.”
Stops alongside the tourism workplace’s Queen’s Gambit itinerary embrace the previous Foremost Road places of two Twentieth-century Lexington landmarks that play roles within the present: the Ben Snyder Division Retailer and the Phoenix Resort, each sadly now demolished.
Nonetheless standing, although, are areas such because the historic Chevy Chase neighborhood, the place the maximalist house of Beth Harmon’s adoptive dad and mom is supposed to be, and the stately campus of Tevis’s alma mater, the College of Kentucky.
The tour even offers actual alternate options for companies that have been made up for The Queen’s Gambit, akin to Bradley’s Pharmacy and Lex Liquors. Strive Wheeler Pharmacy and Justins’ Home of Bourbon as a substitute.
To immerse your self much more absolutely on the earth of the present, you may e-book an in a single day keep within the Harmon Room on the 21c Museum Resort positioned within the previous First Nationwide Financial institution Constructing only a block from the place the Ben Snyder retailer and the Phoenix Resort as soon as stood.
Designers Isabel Ladd and Lucy Jones have captured the visible look of the sequence, proper right down to the busy wallpaper (sporting a chess motif, naturally) and mid-century fashionable furnishings.
(Picture courtesy of VisitLEX)
Chess books and a regionally made chessboard beautify the room as nicely, together with the pièce de résistance: an set up of oversize chess items suspended from the ceiling over the mattress, recalling the heroine’s drug-fueled hallucinations.
The Harmon Room, which might be booked at 21c for round $230 per night time, will likely be obtainable into early summer season, after which it should return to its unique design.
You won’t be able to journey once more by then, however don’t be concerned: Lexington’s different places that impressed The Queen’s Gambit ought to nonetheless be round to welcome you as soon as the vaccine has lastly mentioned checkmate to the coronavirus.
The Queen’s Gambit Information to Lexington might be discovered at VisitLEX.com.
