Entertainment Weekly‘s James Hibberd has revealed through a tweet that he spent time on the set of Game of Thrones when filming was going on in Dubrovnik. In the tweet, he coyly refers to an outdoorsy, pet-owning girl he met while travelling… and he shared a photo of himself posing with Emilia Clarke in costume as Daenerys Targaryen.
What interests us most is the background, however, which is our first glimpse at one of the sets built to represent the fabled city of Qarth.
The gate and wall as seen here, with the serpents, lions, and more fairly faithfully reflects the description of the first of the triple-walls of Qarth:
Two more walls lies behind it, each taller than the last, and featuring even more extraordinary imagery. The height of the walls doesn’t seem to match very well, but it seems clear to us that they’ll be extending the height with CG… and perhaps working in the other walls the same way. It should look quite extraordinary. You can also see an extra in a Qartheen guardsman’s armor and clothing, with a strange breastplate and wide, loose white trousers. Next to him is a broken area in the wall, which may suggest that the Qartheen aren’t maintaining them as they once did and that their culture is on the wane (or perhaps it’s just there as a detail for verisimilitude).