In the Tabernas Desert, in Andalusia, there is a village where time has stood still since the days of the Wild West. There are the saloon, the bank, the sheriff’s office, the telegraph, and even a funeral home business. It is Western Leone, the set that Sergio Leone wanted for Once Upon a Time in the West, today seeking a new owner.
Those who dream of owning a piece of cinema history have a concrete opportunity: it is for sale, at a price well lower than in the past.
The Western Leone Village Is For Sale
The listing appeared on Idealista with a price of €1.6 million. This is not the first attempt to sell, because after the pandemic the owners had tried to sell the village for about €2.5 million.
The property spans almost 86,000 square metres, of which 1,881 buildings stand. Inside there is everything needed to recreate a frontier town. Added to this is the large McBain Farm’s red house, one of the most recognizable buildings in the film, still standing after nearly sixty years.
What could the buyer do with it? The listing points to two avenues. The first is to continue to use it as a set for films, commercials, music videos, fashion shoots and social-content productions. The second is to convert it into a venue for events, from themed weddings to concerts, up to corporate initiatives. After all, the village already has a dual nature. For years it has been transformed into an open-to-the-public theme park, while continuing to host film shoots, TV series, and advertising productions.
From Sergio Leone’s Set to Europe’s Hollywood
In Tabernas and its surroundings stand the three main film-set villages: Western Leone is one of them, alongside Oasys MiniHollywood and Fort Bravo. It was built by the very same Italian director for Once Upon a Time in the West, released in 1968, with Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson. Those who want to retrace the locations of Once Upon a Time in the West cannot miss this corner of Spain.
However, Sergio Leone knew Almería well even before. Here he shot the Dollar Trilogy with Clint Eastwood: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). He had realized earlier than others that the Tabernas Desert, a half-hour drive north of Almería, could become the Arizona and Texas of the big screen. It is considered the only true desert in Europe, even though, instead of dunes, there are eroded badlands, dry canyons and barren elevations—a landscape that seems to have stepped out of the American Southwest.
Since the late fifties, more than 170 western films have been shot here, and the area has earned the nickname Hollywood of Europe. Not just cowboys, though. Among these rocks have passed Lawrence of Arabia, Indiana Jones, Exodus: Gods and Kings by Ridley Scott, and Game of Thrones. In 2020, moreover, the European Film Academy declared the desert “Treasure of European Cinematic Culture”.
