The New Zealand mountain used for Edoras in The Lord of the Rings is Mount Sunday.
Mount Sunday is an isolated hill in Canterbury’s inland South Island, near the upper Rangitata River and the Potts River. During location scouting, a storm diverted the filmmakers’ aircraft, giving the crew an unexpected view of the hill. Peter Jackson’s team selected it as the setting for Edoras, the capital of Rohan.
The production spent about eleven months constructing roads, houses, stables, and Meduseld, the Golden Hall of the Kings, on the summit. Filming at the site lasted roughly three weeks in 1999. The set was dismantled afterward, so visitors today see the natural landscape rather than a preserved movie village.
Mount Sunday is also a geological feature called a roche moutonnée, shaped by glacial erosion during the Pleistocene. Its film connection has made it a popular Middle-earth tourism destination, although Mount Sunday itself is not a mountain in Tolkien’s fictional geography.