Where Is Nevermore Academy in 'Wednesday'?

Entreating entrance at Nevermore Academy from the Netflix show 'Wednesday'

"In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore." 

The saintly day being Wednesday Friday Addams, of course. 

Edgar Allan Poe and Wednesday Addams are cut from the same raven-black cloth, so it was only right that the hit Netflix spin-off of The Addams Family stands on the shoulder of the goth giant. 

Nevermore Academy, “Wednesday’s” fictional school for macabre misfits, was named after the renowned refrain in one of Poe's most enduring works, "The Raven." As many teenage goo goo mucks know, Poe, along with Vincent Price, has long been an inspiration for "Wednesday" producer and director Tim Burton. 

With that meeting of minds came Nevermore Academy, but there's also Nevermore House. Legend has it that "Nevermore" took inspiration from an actual raven that would come cawing outside Poe's house in Baltimore, where he lived for two years. The Amity Street address has since been turned into a national landmark, The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum; tours are available. 

Tell us, tell us, Places of Fancy, we implore—where is Academy Nevermore? 

Well, duh, duh, duh, dum, snap, snap, reader, it's not anywhere near Jericho, Vermont—the town exists by name IRL(!)—but in Romania. 

Cantacuzino Castle (above via Whitepixels) in Bușteni, Romania and after visual effects as Nevermore Academy (below via Netflix)

Now this would be very on-brand for Romania, which has not so much embraced its connection to Dracula as bit into it. And the Transylvania-adjacent locale has the blessing of Burton himself. 

Cantacuzino Castle, 90 miles from Bucharest, had the "right scale and gothic feel" for Burton, according to Alma Bacula, head of production at Romanian production company Icon Film, which helped scout the location. The castle was home to Prince Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, who was no Vlad the Impaler but no less aristocratic. (Dracula's home is just 41 kilometers from the castle.)

Cantacuzino Castle lured the exterior photography team all the way to the town of Busteni, a two-hour drive from the Romanian capital. With its grand central turret, the 1911 castel had all the makings of the Addams Family house as seen on Charles Addams' cartoons.

Production designer Mark Scruton took visual cues from those groundbreaking artworks in the lead-up to "Wednesday." The VFX team simply had to give the structure the semblance of having mansard roofs post-production. 

Scruton had collaborated with Burton on "Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children." For that equally kooky and ooky movie, the duo decamped to another European castle for exterior shooting duties. 

The "Wednesday" crew could have filmed on location in a Second Empire mansion in New England, but they stayed in Romania (because budget). 

The famous Ophelia Hall attic, a.k.a. the dorm room split between witchy Wednesday and wolfy Enid, was filmed right within the country. This and other sets, including the rooftop balcony where Wednesday played the cello, were built for the series at Studiourile Buftea (Buftea Studio). 

Guided tours are available through the studio, where "Wednesday" fans can still find the Quad (sans the dead-tree centerpiece) and other telltale-heart sceneries from the show. Another 1911 structure, the neo-gothic masterwork Casa Niculescu-Dorobantu in Bucharest, stood in for indoor shots, as did the grand marble staircase and interiors of the much-older Palatul Monteoru, also in the capital. Additionally, the Bucharest Botanical Gardens was where Christina Ricci, the OG Wednesday, played (green)house. 

Production moved to Ireland for the succeeding season of "Wednesday," so will Jenna Ortega find her way back to Romania soon? 

Never say nevermore.