Two days before filming the Rome museum scene, the production team learned that permission to film in a historic palazzo was rescinded for political reasons. The team scrambled to find an alternate location in time to keep the shoot on schedule, and found such a place in the Palazzo Doria-Pamphili. They later learned that this was the place where George Eliot met the man on whom she based the character of Will Ladislaw, the man she eventually married.