In anticipation of the final season of Game of Thrones, DDB and Foxtel teamed up with Glue Society to create Grave of Thrones: a large-scale installation that transformed a section of Sydney’s Centennial Park into a cemetery honouring the show’s most infamous characters and their many memorable deaths.

Artist and Director behind the work, Pete Baker (of Glue Society) began his process with extensive research into cemeteries and their layouts, exploring the social and visual hierarchies of these spaces as well as period architecture. Pete then worked with the agency to map out the world of the cemetery, creating a tiered system of grave markers to better echo a lived-in burial ground (pardon the pun), with variances in wealth, status and personal taste ever-present. Four tiers made up this hierarchy; mausoleums, a central monument, individual headstones for fan favourite characters and pauper’s graves. Together they worked in conversation across the 2,000 square-metre space, creating a tangible sense of scale – essential for the installation to feel like a believable Westerosi cemetery.

In honour of the show, and its devoted fans, the team set out not only to create headstones, but to ensure that the detail of the craft stood up to the source material, with countless intricacies and hidden easter eggs interwoven throughout for eagle eyed mourners.

Each grave was inscribed with both the method of death and the episode in which the character dies, prompting visitors to revisit those moments of loss. The graves were fabricated to look like different types of stone, of various ages and weathering.

After installing the 37 monuments, the team planted roses and placed moss (grown specifically for this work) around the gravesites to enhance the feeling of a genuine resting place.

Visitors were encouraged to wander, reflect, and pay their respects, guided by a downloadable map and audio tour that revealed the storytelling embedded in each grave.

Once completed, the installation represented around 2,500 hours of labour. Within just three days, more than 40,000 people visited to pay their respects at the Grave of Thrones.