There's a scene in The Avengers where Loki stands in a square in Stuttgart, Germany demanding that a crowd of terrified civilians kneel before him. It's one of Loki's finest moments on screen. Except it's not Stuttgart. It's not even Germany. It's Cleveland, Ohio.
---------------------------------------------
That's the thing about Cleveland. It's been one of Hollywood's best kept secrets for years. New York City, Washington D.C., Metropolis. The streets are real. The buildings are extraordinary. But what you see on the big screen is not all it seems.
Public Square: Ground Zero for Marvel and DC
You've seen this square before. You just didn't know it was here.
Art Deco towers, the magnificent Terminal Tower overhead, the hum of a city that knows exactly what it is. The Avengers used it as Stuttgart, and James Gunn transformed it into the heart of Metropolis for his 2025 Superman reboot. Two of the biggest films in modern cinema, both shot on the same stretch of downtown Cleveland.
And there's something genuinely moving about that choice. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman in this city in the early 1930s, and when Gunn brought the Man of Steel back to Public Square he wasn't just choosing a location. He was bringing him home.
East 9th Street and Euclid Avenue: The Action Corridor
If Public Square is where the drama unfolded, then East 9th Street is where it exploded.
Those burning taxis in The Avengers, Iron Man crashing to earth, the climactic Battle of New York that had audiences gripping their seats. None of it was New York. It was East 9th Street, Cleveland, on a Tuesday.
Marvel transformed that small patch of downtown Cleveland into a warzone and then quietly handed it back to the city as if nothing had happened. As the responsible traveller would say, leave only footprints.
Look closely at those battle sequences and you'll spot Heinen's grocery store, housed inside the domed rotunda of the former Cleveland Trust Building. Step inside and you'll find it's not only the location where Captain America bravely rescued civilians from impending doom, but also one of the most beautiful grocery stores in the world. Full stop.
Right on the corner of East 9th and Euclid, the exact junction where the cameras were rolling, sits the
Kimpton Schofield Hotel. The
Metropolitan at The 9 is directly across the road. Guests at either hotel aren't just near a filming location. They're on it.
A few minutes walk away,
Playhouse Square is the largest theatre district in the US outside of New York and a natural destination for an evening out.
The Cleveland Arcade: The Scene Everyone Was Talking About
You'll know it when you see it.
James Gunn filmed Superman and Lois Lane sharing a kiss high above the arcade floor, suspended in the air beneath a stunning Victorian glass ceiling in a building that's been standing since 1890. The crew spent an entire week rehearsing the stunt. Watch it and you'll understand why.
The Arcade was also America's first ever indoor shopping centre, inspired by the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, and it shows. Five soaring storeys of ironwork and glass that feel more like a cathedral than a shopping centre.
The
Hyatt Regency Cleveland is situated inside the building itself. Book a room with an arcade view and you're essentially sleeping inside the film set.
Right next door, the Leader Building is the Daily Planet. Outside it, a spectacular battle sequence reduced the street to nothing more than rubble. Fake rubble, that is. Cleveland recovered quickly.
Superior Avenue: Fast, Furious, and Not New York
In 2017, The Fate of the Furious brought Vin Diesel, Charlize Theron and Jason Statham to the streets of what audiences assumed was New York City. If you're still reading this, you already know what comes next. It wasn't New York. It was the junction of Superior Avenue and East 6th Street, Cleveland.
On nearby Prospect Avenue, the Halle Bros Parking Garage provided the building from which cars came raining down onto the street below.
It's a pattern that repeats itself throughout Cleveland's cinematic history. Directors arrive looking for a city with scale, architecture and the authenticity that great cinema demands. They find all of that here, and then some.
Also Spotted in Cleveland
These locations are just the start.
The
Cleveland Museum of Art served as the interior of S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, while the Lakeview Cemetery Dam became the crew's makeshift safe house in the same film.
Over in Tremont, the stunning St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral was used for the iconic wedding scene in The Deer Hunter, with Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep. And for Superman fans, Progressive Field was transformed into the Metropolis Meteors baseball stadium, while Cleveland City Hall stood in for Metropolis City Hall.
The more you look, the more you find. That's very Cleveland.
One City. Countless Scenes.
The blockbusters are just the beginning. Cleveland's neighbourhoods, streets and landmarks have drawn filmmakers for decades, pulled in by the city's buildings, its texture and a city that knows how to make things happen.
Wherever you walk in Cleveland, there's a good chance the cameras have been rolling there before you.
None of these locations are hidden. They're the same streets and places any first time visitor would wander through on a good afternoon in the city. That's what makes Cleveland so quietly extraordinary. It never needed to pretend to be something it wasn't. The world is just starting to notice.
---------------------------------------------
Posted by: Destination Cleveland
Posted on: 08/06/2026