Gdynia, Pomerelia (Poland) Lindau, Holy Roman...

Where, exactly, does “Tangled” take place?

The strictest answer to this question is: nowhere at all. The Kingdom of Corona, which is never actually named in the film, was also never plotted on a map or timeline of world history. Like many of Disney’s fairy-tale realms, it is an invention meant to invoke a certain feel, but not specific historical references.

“The world is from a storybook: It is thus familiar and, although fundamentally ‘European,’ not located in any one country in particular,” according to “The Art of Tangled.”

Yet the Kingdom of Corona is undeniably a place with specific cultural influences, set in a very clear part of Europe at a very clear time.

We’re here to help detangle the clues that designers have left – both in the film and in their comments about it – about the places that inspired “Tangled.” By looking at the architecture, nature, landscape, time, and (for lack of a better word) politics in “Tangled,” we can triangulate fairly specifically where the Kingdom of Corona might have been had it ever existed – or at least narrow it down to a few intriguing candidates.

Architecture

The island-town shows two distinct styles of architecture:

Co-director Byron Howard said the designers made the castle look distinct from other Disney fairy-tale castles by giving it “Eastern European features like copper domes.” The style of copper “onion domes” apparent on the castle emerged in Russia and never spread farther west than Germany. Onion domes flourished in Eastern and Central European architecture from the fifteenth century onward.

On the other hand, the thick-timbered houses of the town date from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance. While timber-frame architecture (also known by the German term “fachwerk”) is prominent in France and England, designers have said the look of the town buildings borrows extensively from the village in “Pinocchio,” which was inspired by Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber in the German state of Bavaria.

Those two types of architecture really only intersected in Central and Eastern Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.

Nature

Production designer Doug Rogers said the inspiration for the wilderness of the Kingdom came from Central Europe: “We researched what the major types of forests were in Eastern Germany, Poland, and Hungary.”

He said designers chose oak, beech, and hornbeam forests in that region because of the fluid shapes they created. Beech forests on the German island of Rügen, for example, while hardly an identical match for the forests of Corona, give the similar feeling of a vaulted wood – an immense, cathedral-like space beneath a high canopy.

Landscape

The Corona landscape is quite distinct: a range of large hills or small mountains descending directly to the shore of a large body of water.

Is it a lake or a sea?

No lake in Germany, Poland, or Hungary projects the immensity of the Corona “sea,” where the shores beyond the castle are hidden from view. On the other hand, no sea could be as calm as the harbor during the lantern scene.

If it is a sea, the Baltic is the only option in Eastern Europe, and the only place on the Baltic with a shoreline fronted by a range of hills is along the western shores of the Gulf of Gdansk in Poland. The highlands have nothing like the cliff over which Flynn and Max tumble, or the steep-walled valley that hides Rapunzel’s tower. But along the overwhelmingly flat Baltic coast, there is no other location that even comes close.

Farther inland, the tallest hill (called Wiezyca) is more than one thousand feet high, and the surrounding area is known as the Kashubian Lake District (Szwajcaria Kaszubska), giving the area lots of opportunities for dams.

If the Corona island is in a lake, only Lake Constance (known as Bodensee in German), sitting at the borders of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland is a convincing option. Lake Balaton in Hungary and Neusiedlersee in Austria are similarly large but have little in the way of hills surrounding them. Lake Constance, however, gives a remarkable impression of the setting for the Corona island in some places.

Time

In the added features on the “Tangled” Blu-Ray, the directors say the Snuggly Duckling was conceived of as an “eighteenth century biker bar.” With the ebb and flow of war and politics in Eastern Europe, that date makes some locations more feasible than others.

Politics

If the King and Queen of Corona really are a King and Queen, there was only one monarchy that lived on the shore of the Baltic or an Eastern European lake: the Swedish monarchy. The kings of Poland as well as of the numerous German states of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance lived inland, while most of the coastline was dominated by the Hanseatic League – an economic alliance of thriving port cities essentially ruled by the merchant classes.

PLOTTING THE REAL-WORLD CORONA

Of course, as a “storybook world,” Corona was intentionally designed not to stand up to this kind of geographic and historical scrutiny. But when Rapunzel and Flynn bend over their atlas in the “Kingdom Dance” scene, Rapunzel is clearly pointing to the East Indies – the real world. So in that spirit, here are the four best bets for where Rapunzel and Flynn would find themselves on that map, in reverse order.

(4) Stockholm, Sweden

• Good fit: Stockholm had a real king and queen as well as an island setting that would have been about the right size in the seventeenth century.

• Poor fit: The surrounding landscape has no real hills, and Stockholm is a stretch architecturally – not being a good candidate for either a town of timbered houses or a castle topped by onion domes.

See full Sweden gallery.

(3) Wolgast, Germany

• Good fit: The coastal town of Wolgast served as the seat for the Dukes of Pomerania from the late Middle Ages until the seventeenth century, giving it something close to a monarchy. Wolgast is also a good fit architecturally, with timbered houses and the castle from which the dukes ruled situated on an island in the harbor.

In fact, island cities are a defining feature of German cities along the Baltic coast during the time when “Tangled” would have taken place. While the overall impression wasn’t exactly Corona’s Mont-St.-Michel-like village rising to a castle on its highest point, Wolgast in particular still evoked the quaint feel and island setting of the Kingdom of Corona.

• Poor fit: Wolgast reached the height of its authority in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the eighteenth century, Wolgast had been conquered by Sweden. Moreover, the landscape around Wolgast is flat. Thirty miles inland, the Helpt Hills (Helpten Berge) are the highest in Pomerania. But that’s a minor distinction. They’re only 587 feet high and rise only slightly from the surrounding upland landscape.

See full Pomerania gallery.

(2) Lindau, Germany

• Good fit: Visually, the island of Lindau in Lake Constance is probably the closest any place in the real world gets to Corona. It simply looks the part. The architecture is perfect, and the hills that ring the lake lead into the picturesque Allgäu Mountains. The political history of the island even leaves some leeway for historical fiction: It was a Free and Imperial City in the eighteenth century – essentially an independent island-city owned by the Holy Roman Emperor. But it is plausible that a prominent noble could have come to have significant influence over it.

• Poor fit: The pre-alpine climate of the region surrounding Lake Constance means that the woods include large amounts of pines, something the designers of “Tangled” specifically avoided.

See full Lake Constance (Bodensee) gallery.

(1) Gdynia, Poland

• Good fit: The Pomerelian coast of Poland offers the only Baltic coastal landscape that approaches the Kingdom of Corona. The architecture also fits neatly. The chief city of Polish Pomerelia, Gdansk, had timbered houses and a town hall that included some of the architectural elements apparent in the Corona castle. Gdansk was also a major trading hub, and several of the ships at port in Corona are clearly seafaring merchant ships, far too large for any European lake.

• Poor fit: Not only was Gdansk in the Hanseatic League (no king), but it was one of the biggest cities in the Hansa during the eighteenth century, with as many as 50,000 people. A quaint port town, it was not.

Some thirteen miles north, the current port city of Gdynia didn’t exist in the eighteenth century, but with a little license for fairy-tale fiction, it could be a good match. The low hills come right to the coast, Corona-like. Only a few miles inland, the hills top 600 feet, and twenty-three miles southwest is the Kashubian Lake District.

While Gdynia would have sworn loyalty to the far-off Polish king, a class of Polish nobles known as magnates was able to accrue substantial landholdings – called “ordynacja” estates – in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Wikipedia says these estates “were veritable little principalities” and “rivaled the estates of the king.” A fictional Corona could be an ordynacja to “rival the estate of the king” – perhaps owned by a nobleman who became a large landowner from wealth made in the Hanseatic trade.

Put this noble “king” in the eighteenth century and on a fictional island off the Gdynia shore, and we’re about as close to Corona as we’re likely to get.

Besides, the Polish word for “crown”? Korona.

Perhaps the folks at “Tangled” just got the spelling wrong.

See full Pomerelia gallery.

See all posts of real-world influences.