The Last Of Us location: what’s the “Bostonian Museum”?

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As one of the most streamed TV series of 2023, The Last Of Us sparks new curiosity with every new episode. And definitely, Episode 2 gave particular attention to the location where the protagonists are: Joel, Tess, and Ellie need to meet with the Fireflies, and the only way available seems to be what Joel calls “the museum”: the group enters into a building named “the Bostonian Museum,” and people are curious to understand what this place is. Let’s find out.

You can watch the video “Inside Episode 2” shared by the HBO Max Youtube channel here.

The Last Of Us locations in Boston: what’s the “Bostonian Museum”?

The Bostonian Museum is a fictional place present in Episode 2 of the HBO TV Show The Last Of Us. The site doesn’t exist in real life (there is no “Bostonian Museum” in Boston), but it’s inspired by several museums in the city.

It’s worth noting that the actual filming location of the HBO TV series The Last Of Us wasn’t Boston. As Wikipedia explains, the whole season was filmed in 2020 during the covid pandemic, which didn’t allow the crew to move easily from one place to another. Therefore, all episodes were filmed in High River and Fort Macleod, Canada.

The official fandom wiki of The Last Of Us describes it as the “Freedom Museum of Boston,” which is also a place that doesn’t exist in real life. However, Boston offers a well-renowned Freedom Trail, which is a 2.5-mile walk through 16 significant locations of the American Revolutionary War, the war that secured the independence of the United States in the late 1700s. On the official website of the Freedom Trail, you will identify several locations that could have represented an inspiration for the “Bostonian Museum” in The Last Of Us.

The “Bostonian Museum” you see in Episode 2 is a building made of red bricks belonging to Georgian architecture. Among the real-life historical places in Boston that most look like the museum in the TV show, you can surely identify the Old State House and the Faneuil Hall Marketplace, both parts of the Freedom Trail we already mentioned. You can see the actual buildings in the photo below.

The Faneuil Hall Marketplace (left) and the Old State House (right) in Boston

You can surely see the resemblance, but also the differences with the museum in the TV show. Both actual buildings look bigger and taller than the one in the HBO series, which also seems located closer to other modern buildings. However, excluding the fungus that was taking over walls and doors in Episode 2, the architectural style is definitely very similar.

Other places in Boston that look similar to the “Bostonian Museum” in The Last Of Us are the Old Corner Bookstore (also part of the Freedom trail, you can see it in this picture on Wikipedia) and the residential buildings in Beacon Hill (as you can see here).

In conclusion, you won’t find in Boston the actual place where the museum scene in Episode 2 of The Last Of Us takes place. But the “Bostonian Museum” you see in the TV series looks similar to some historical buildings you can visit in Boston.

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