Where Was Gilmore Girls Filmed? Every Major Location Revealed

"Gilmore Girls" remains as popular as ever, enjoying a resurgence every year because it is an ideal show to watch in the fall, the perfect season to cozy up with Lorelai (Lauren Graham), Rory (Alexis Bledel), Luke (Scott Patterson), and the whole Stars Hollow gang. But while the show embodies this season on the East Coast so well, one of the things "Gilmore Girls" fans may not know is that the filming for the series took place entirely in California — and not even in a real town.

With the exception of the pilot, which was shot in Toronto, Canada, the major settings in the fictional town of Stars Hollow — such as the iconic town square gazebo, Stars Hollow High, and Luke's Diner — are actually located on "Any Street USA" at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. The expansive set was built on the studio's back lot in 1939, designed to look like a main street for an average mid-west town. It's regularly decorated in accordance with the needs of the show or movie that is being filmed there. For "Gilmore Girls," production designers would need to put a New England spin on the street, covering the trees with autumnal leaves or fake snow when required.

This versatility of the back lot set means a number of other popular shows, like "Hart of Dixie," "Pretty Little Liars," and "Abbot Elementary," have also been able to lay claim to the impressive all-purpose street. But behind the doors, the buildings are empty, so all of the show's indoor scenes took place inside a sound studio. Additionally, the interior and exterior scenes set at the Gilmore Mansion in Hartford, Connecticut — which is the setting for some of the best ever "Gilmore Girls" episodes — were also filmed in the studio, as were the majority of Rory's Yale scenes.

While "Gilmore Girls" was primarily filmed at the Warner Bros. studio, some scenes were shot on location. For example, in Season 2, Episode 4, Lorelai and Rory take a road trip to Harvard, and since Warner Bros. doesn't have a purpose-built structure for a centuries-old university just hanging around, the show needed to film at a real location. However, "Gilmore Girls" didn't use the real Harvard; instead, the mother-daughter duo's college visit was filmed at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Rory's initial visit to Yale was filmed at Pomona College. Further exterior scenes for Yale were filmed at the University of Southern California, but just like with Gilmore Mansion — which is home to Richard (Edward Hermann) and Emily (Kelly Bishop) — sets were erected on a sound stage so Rory's college scenes didn't all need to be filmed on location, especially those that took place inside her dorm room or a lecture hall.

"Gilmore Girls" also introduces another important setting in the pilot: Chilton Preparatory School. Like Harvard and Yale, Chilton's impressive brick-and-mortar buildings weren't something that could be filmed in the studio. So, while all classroom scenes were filmed in the Burbank studios, exterior shots were filmed at Greystone Mansion, which is located at 905 Loma Vista Dr. in Beverly Hills.

Stars Hollow is one of those iconic TV towns everyone wants to visit, but, sadly, the quirky Connecticut town is a fictional creation. "Gilmore Girls" creator Amy Sherman-Palladino first dreamed up the idea for Lorelai and Rory's sweet hometown while on vacation with her husband, Dan Palladino. She had already begun writing the show, and her initial plans had the Gilmore girls live in the city. "But then I went on vacation to Connecticut, because I wanted to see Mark Twain's house," Sherman-Palladino explained during an interview with AV Club. "I stayed at an inn, and it was very charming, in a tiny town, and everybody seemed to know each other, and there was a pumpkin patch across the street. I went to a diner, and people kept getting up to get their own coffee. No one was there to be waited on. It seemed like a fun environment to put [the characters] in."

Washington, Connecticut, is the real-life inspiration for Stars Hollow. The series is really based around the community of the town, not just following the ups and downs of fan-favorite mother-daughter duo Lorelai and Rory, but also the various other colorful characters who live there. It was Richard and Emily who ended up living in a city, with their lifestyle providing a stark contrast to the small town quirkiness of Stars Hollow. Explaining how she made that decision, Sherman Palladino said, "If they were going to live in a small town in Connecticut, the parents needed to be big-city, which–in Connecticut, Hartford is about as big as you're going to get."