Rhondda Valleys, South Wales (Castle in the Sky)

The pithead winding gear of the old Lewis Merthyr Colliery at Trehafod, now the Rhondda Heritage Park. Miyazaki traveled to Wales around the 1984 to 1985 miners' strike and has said he admired how the mining communities fought for their way of life. Pazu's town in Castle in the Sky, with its terraced houses clinging to the slopes and its headframes over the shafts, grew from the South Wales valleys he saw. The heritage park is the easiest place to stand under that kind of machinery today.