Monumental sand coloured apartment blocks with giant columns and pediments line a straight pedestrian axis toward the river.
What Antigone looks like
Antigone's buildings are cast in beige tinted precast concrete made to resemble stone, with monumental fluted columns and Greco Roman ornament enlarged to giant scale. Most blocks rise six to seven storeys, with set back floors above wide arched openings that link one building to the next. A straight pedestrian axis runs close to a kilometre from Les Échelles de la Ville to the river Lez, a chain of plazas strung along it.
Ground floors carry shops and offices under the apartments above, with the Polygone centre and Les Échelles de la Ville standing at one end of the axis, behind their own colonnades and a grand stair. Stone paving runs the length of the promenade, with rows of trees down its centre.
opens first, its layout set out on the golden ratio. Further along, holds a fountain of mythological busts. The Hôtel de Métropole, the seat of the metropolitan authority, stands behind its own colonnade on . A headless replica of the Winged Victory of Samothrace and a replica of the Venus of Arles stand in the paved squares.
Tramway lines 1 and 4 run through the district, with stops named Antigone, Léon Blum and Place de l'Europe. The and an indoor Olympic pool sit toward the river end of the axis, built in the same sand coloured concrete as the housing around them.
Shot in Antigone
Lost Bullet 3, the Netflix action film, used Antigone as its main Montpellier location. The production filmed there over a week in February 2024, staging a car crash stunt at and a motorcycle sequence filmed by drone on avenue du Pirée. A car explosion was staged in front of the Hôtel de Métropole on Place Zeus.
Lost Bullet 3, 2025
Hôtel de Métropole
This building is the seat of the Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole authority. The production staged a car explosion in front of it on Place Zeus, part of a week of filming across Antigone in February 2024. The same shoot included a car crash at Place du Millénaire and a drone shot motorcycle sequence on avenue du Pirée. Street View
What Antigone can double for
Les Espaces d'Abraxas in Noisy-le-Grand, Île-de-France, France
Ricardo Bofill's own Les Espaces d'Abraxas uses the same precast concrete orders at an even more theatrical scale, and productions including Brazil and The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 have shot its courtyards and staircases as a monumental backdrop. The complex reads harsher and more brutalist than Antigone's warmer sand tone. Abraxas has no pedestrian axis or river view, so wide shots work better around its central amphitheatre stair than along a street. Try searching precast concrete orders now.
Les Arcades du Lac in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Île-de-France, France
Bofill's earlier Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines project mixes arcaded housing blocks around an artificial lake, in the same sand coloured concrete and repeated colonnades as Antigone's own squares. Its four and five storey blocks are lower and the water setting gives it a different silhouette. The lakeside arcades photograph well from across the water, closer to how Antigone's own river end reads than its central axis does. Try searching sand coloured concrete now.
Richmond Riverside's columns, pediments and arched openings were built new in the 1980s behind historic facades along the riverside walk. The material is brick and render rather than Antigone's sand coloured precast concrete, and the scale is far smaller. Keep frames tight on individual facades. A wide shot shows ordinary Thames side townhouses rather than Antigone's giant repeated order. Try searching arched openings now.
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