Liverpool has been hiding in plain sight on American screens for decades; you have likely seen its streets pass for New York, Washington or another U.S. city without ever realizing it. That familiarity is the trick: nothing about Liverpool announces itself as foreign, and nothing gives away the illusion. On camera, it looks real because it already feels known.
You’ve seen this British city on screen for years, and filmmakers have been hiding this secret for decades. Photo credit: Titanic Hotel Liverpool.
That quality has made Liverpool one of the most reliable stand-ins in film and television. Directors return to it not to perfectly replicate an American city, but because it avoids looking too much like any single place. Wide streets, stone facades and civic buildings read as convincingly American, while the absence of instantly recognizable landmarks keeps the setting flexible and anonymous.
For years, this happened quietly, unnoticed by most viewers. What changed was the moment people began recognizing the pattern for themselves, often through brief, unexpected scenes that felt familiar without being easy to place. Once audiences connected those images back to real locations they could visit, the illusion became visible. After that, it was difficult not to notice how often Liverpool had been playing America all along.
One of those moments came in Taylor Swift’s “I Can See You” music video. The sequence is brief, but it lingers once fans begin connecting those shots to the locations. The camera moves across stone bridges and wide streets that seem familiar, even if viewers cannot place them. I noticed the same feeling when I watched it, because it felt conventional before I could explain why.
From film set to real address
The sense of recognition sharpens near Liverpool’s northern docks, where the former warehouses of Stanley Dock now house the Titanic Hotel. Standing outside the back of the hotel, beside the water and facing the warehouses opposite, it becomes clear how easily a background scene turns into a destination once you can place your feet on the ground.
The red brick buildings, dock roads and bridges that appear briefly on screen sit close enough that you can step outside and recognize them almost immediately. What once passed as scenery becomes a place you can physically walk through.
The Titanic Hotel sits opposite warehouses that have also appeared in “Peaky Blinders,” adding another layer to the area’s screen history. Guests staying here do not have to hunt for filming locations; they are already surrounded by them.
For years, filmmakers have used Liverpool because its streets already look like the cities they need. Parts of “The Batman” used Liverpool as Gotham. “The Crown” filmed scenes here meant to be Washington, D.C., and “Florence Foster Jenkins” used the city as New York. The disguise worked because audiences were not meant to notice.
What is different now is that audiences are beginning to realize that many of the American cities they have seen on screen are, in fact, Liverpool. Recognition does not arrive all at once. It builds as the same buildings appear again and again, then surface online and finally become places people can visit, book and walk between.
Seeing it on foot
That realization often becomes clearer on foot. Guided walking tours through Liverpool’s city center link filming locations to the area’s real history, moving past former banks, dock roads and public buildings that have doubled as American cities for decades. Guides explain why filmmakers keep returning to the same streets and how Liverpool’s architecture makes those transformations possible. For American visitors, the shift happens quickly as places that once felt like anonymous backdrops gain names, stories and context.
Liverpool’s history makes this overlap possible. The city grew wealthy through trade with America and built docks, warehouses and civic buildings to support it. Those routes once moved goods and people across the Atlantic. Today, they move film crews and cruise passengers and visitors who arrive already knowing what they want to see, even if they did not plan to.
Staying at the Titanic Hotel places visitors inside that history. The building preserves its industrial structure, from exposed brick to iron pillars, while sitting beside streets that filmmakers return to.
Liverpool has spent years appearing on screen as America without calling attention to itself. Audiences saw the streets long before they knew the city’s name, and that familiarity is now turning into visits, walking routes and hotel stays. When a place feels known before you arrive, the decision to go feels easier. That is how a location that once stood in for somewhere else becomes a destination in its own right.
Mandy is a luxury travel, fine dining and bucket-list-adventure journalist with expert insight from 46 countries. She uncovers unforgettable experiences around the world and brings them to life through immersive storytelling that blends indulgence, culture and discovery, and shares them with a global audience as co-founder of Food Drink Life. Her articles appear on MSN and through the Associated Press wire in major U.S. outlets, including NBC, the Daily News, Boston Herald, the Chicago Sun-Times and many more.
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