Licence to thrill The ‘James Bond’ franchise is as famous for its glamorous settings as for its rip-roaring adventures. Inspired by No Time to Die, Antonia Windsor explores the best 007 film locations across the world Venice With medieval palazzi rising out of the Grand Canal, you can’t mistake when Bond is in Venice. He made his first visit in 1963 in From Russia With Love, in which Sean Connery and Daniela Bianchi (as Tatiana Romanova) stay in a hotel in San Giorgio Maggiore and drift under the Bridge of Sighs in a gondola. Strangely, Connery didn’t actually shoot the scenes in Venice—they were all done at Pinewood Studios and in Scotland.
By 1979, Moonraker had been filmed on location. In a thrilling scene, Roger Moore rides a souped-up gondola down the Grand Canal being chased by a speed boat. At the touch of a button, he manages to convert the gondola into a hovercraft and drives right through St Mark’s Square, causing a shocked waiter to pour wine on his customer. Bond returns in the
final moments of Casino Royale, sailing down the Grand Canal with Vesper to hand in his resignation to MI6. But, of course, it doesn’t end peacefully and dramatic scenes follow —not least a palazzo collapsing into the Canal. Live nearby Set in the heart of Castello, this one-bedroom apartment with its own private entrance and courtyard is the perfect Venetian pied-à-terre. €420,000 (£359,555), Savills (020–3664 9887)
Live nearby Stretching over seven floors (with a lift), this historic house in Istanbul’s Emirgan neighbourhood has eight bedrooms, a lovely garden and magnificent views across the Bosphorus. £4.66 million, Key Holders International (07305 405081)
Istanbul, Turkey Istanbul was one of Ian Fleming’s favourite cities and it’s easy to see why. It’s a magnificent capital at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, with a skyline of domes and minarets, an intricate maze of streets lined with restaurants and tea shops and some of the most important religious buildings in the world. All this, of course, also makes it the perfect Bond backdrop: Skyfall opens with Daniel Craig in a motorbike chase over the roof of the city’s Grand Bazaar and in From Russia with Love Sean Connery meets his love interest, Tatiana Romanova, at the ethereal Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine cathedral-turned-mosque that dominates the city. In this film, the 6th-century Basilica Cistern, the largest of several hundred cisterns that lie beneath the city, becomes a secret waterway through which Kerim and Bond paddle to get to the Russian consulate and eavesdrop on a conversation.
Alamy; Getty
Roger Moore rides a souped-up gondola down the Grand Canal
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