Gotham City
Gotham City ( ) is a fictional American city appearing in comic books published by DC Comics, best known as the home of Batman. Batman’s place of residence was first identified as Gotham City in Batman #4 (Winter 1940). New York Times journalist William Safire described Gotham City as “New York below 14th Street, from SoHo to Greenwich Village, the Bowery, Little Italy, Chinatown, and the sinister areas around the base of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.” Batman artist Neal Adams sees the 1940s mobster history of Chicago as the basis for Gotham, while writer/artist Frank Miller has stated that Metropolis is New York in the daytime and Gotham City is New York at night. Locations used as inspiration or filming locations for the urban portion of Gotham City in the live-action Batman films have included New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Pittsburgh, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong, while British country house locations in Nottinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire have been used to depict the less urban scene of Wayne Manor.
