James Bond locations: 007’s glamorous global hit list
No Time To Die is finally here. We were first introduced to the key locations in this long-awaited instalment of the globe-trotting franchise in late 2019, but what do we know about where it was filmed since then? Here’s what you'll see when you go and see Daniel Craig's much-anticipated last outing as the legendary British spy, plus a round-up of all the beautiful destinations featured in the iconic film series over the decades…
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THE UK
While it’s never certain where the globetrotting 007 will pop up next, we can always be confident there’ll be a bit of Blighty. London has taken a larger role in recent decades, and this is no exception.
Bond’s MI6 base has done the rounds over the decades: after a succession of anonymous sets, it enjoyed a mid-1980s stint (Octopussy, A View to a Kill and Licence to Kill) at the Old War Office on Whitehall, before moving to the real-life M16 building on Albert Embankment (pictured) for GoldenEye. After that, there were switches to Somerset House (Tomorrow Never Dies) and the Barbican Centre (Quantum of Solace) before we saw it blown up in Skyfall.
Spectre also gave us the intriguing view of Bond’s own flat, at 1 Stanley Gardens in West London’s Notting Hill. For No Time to Die we’ll be visiting the home of Q (Ben Whishaw) and, as well as Whitehall, we’ll be heading west for a hush-hush meeting between Bond and M in the shadow of Hammersmith Bridge.
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Filming has also previously taken place in Scotland, after the extended visit home for the climax of Skyfall. A loch-side car chase was filmed in the Cairngorms National Park by Loch Laggan (pictured above), on the estate of Ardverikie House, aka Balmoral in The Crown – though it’s unlikely Bond will be travelling to his homeland for the purposes of the film.
As ever, much of what we'll see will have been filmed in Bond's home studio of Pinewood in Buckinghamshire. This time round scenes set in Havana were constructed on set, including the shootout we see in the trailer. In the past, the countryside around Pinewood has often had a look-in too – much of Skyfall’s ‘Scotland’ was filmed close by and for The World Is Not Enough the oilfields of Azerbaijan were relocated to Elstead in Surrey. In Goldfinger (1964) Bond takes on the titular villain at golf in nearby Stoke Park Country Club (reused as a Hamburg hotel in 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies) while in Thunderball he checks into a health spa at the John Nash-designed Chalfont Park House down the road in Gerrards Cross.
'No Time To Die' is out from Thursday 30 September 2021
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JAMAICA
The launch of Bond 25 back in 2019 (as No Time to Die was known then, the 25th Bond film) took place at creator Ian Fleming’s house Golden Eye in Jamaica, and producer Barbara Broccoli referred to the island as ‘Bond’s spiritual home’ when she revealed that at the opening of the new film Bond will be living there. The trailer shows our man in a shoreside beach house on Port Antonio, on the island's north-east coast, having retired from Her Majesty's secret service. More filming also took place in the capital of Kingston.
The island is certainly familiar ground for Bond, since Jamaica is where Sean Connery watched Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) wander in from the sea in Dr No (1962), the spy's very first screen outing. That beach was Laughing Waters, then part of a private estate near Ocho Rios, and the pair then showered off under the nearby Dunn River Falls in a scene that’s almost as iconic. In Thunderball (1965), he was in the Bahamas, playing high-stakes poker at the tiny Paradise Island and fighting Spectre frogmen and sea life in the waters near Exuma Cay – you can visit the since-renamed Thunderball Grotto, also featured in mermaid pic Splash (1984). Then, at the start of the Roger Moore years, he returned to Jamaica (as San Monique) for Live and Let Die (1973), battling voodoo priest Baron Samedi from his base at the Sans Souci Hotel in Ocho Rios (now Couples Sans Souci), which also appeared in Dr No. That film’s famed crocodile-jumping scene, supposedly in Louisiana, was also filmed on the island, at the farm of local character Ross ‘Kananga’ Heilman, near Montego Bay; now known as Falmouth Swamp Safari, it’s a popular attraction.
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NORWAY
We had a glimpse of Norway in the No Time to Die trailer, with Rami Malek’s villain chasing a girl (a young Madeleine Swann, played as an adult by Léa Seydoux) across a frozen lake. This is Langvann, near Hakadal just north of Oslo, a popular outdoor recreation area. The country also hosts an action highlight set on the famous Atlanterhavsveien (Atlantic Road, pictured) that skirts the western coast. Here, Bond in his Aston Martin is chased by Range Rovers over the dips, curves and arch bridges that connect a series of tiny islands. Opened in 1989, the road is regularly used for testing cars and filming adverts.
The production also shot in the tiny Faroe Islands, 500 miles west of Norway, specifically Kalsoy and its Kallur Lighthouse, perched alone on a promontory.
While Scandinavia may be fresh territory, Bond is well used to a snowscape. In the glacially cool On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), single-use Bond George Lazenby tracked down arch-villain Blofeld to the amazing Piz Gloria, a revolving restaurant on the peak of the Schilthorn, near Mürren in Switzerland, which the production part-financed and named. Spectre (2015) echoed this with the mountaintop Hoffler Clinic, in fact the glass-walled Ice Q, a gourmet restaurant in Sölden in Austria. That country was also the alleged site of one of the franchise’s most famous stunts, when Bond skis off a cliff in The Spy Who Loved Me before opening a Union Jack parachute, though it was really filmed on Asgard Peak on Baffin Island in Canada.
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ITALY
Heavily featured in the No Time to Die trailer, including its opening scene, is Matera (pictured) in Basilicata, in southern Italy, referred to by director Cary Fukunaga as a ‘little hilltop town’. Little it may be, but Matera is a screen regular. Its dusty chalk buildings, dating back to prehistoric troglodyte settlements, make it a favourite for Biblical epics, including The Passion of the Christ (2004), and also won it a role in Wonder Woman (2017) as the mythical town of Themyscira.
Just to the north of Matera is another key location from the trailer, the bridge from which Bond makes a heart-stopping jump. This is the Ponte dell’Acquedotto of Gravina in Puglia, built in the 17th century to link the town with the church of Madonna della Stella across the ravine and later converted into an aqueduct.
Staying south, the production also shot in Sapri, on the west coast. Here, the railway station (renamed as Civita Lucana) was used for scenes with Bond and Swann, while filming also took place at the Canale di Mezzanotte (Midnight Canale), a cave inlet on the coast.
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Italy's appearance here is no surprise, since Italy has become a particular favourite for Bond in recent years. Casino Royale (2006) saw our hero at Villa del Balbianello (pictured) on the shores of Lake Como and on the canals of Venice, while Quantum of Solace (2008) climaxed with a spectacular rooftop chase around Piazza del Campo in Siena, with the Palio horserace as backdrop.
For Bond, these small-town excursions are a new twist, since he usually favours a palace, probably owned by one of his nemeses. Among the few consolations offered by the latter years of Roger Moore’s Bond career was the employment of some of France’s most lavish confections: Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte as Drax’s lair, supposedly transported to California, in Moonraker (1983) and the Renaissance fantasy of the Château de Chantilly as Zorin’s in A View To A Kill (1985). In more recent outings, Bond has wisely stuck to hotels: the wedding-cake grandeur of Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) in the Czech Republic, was the Hotel Splendide, Montenegro, in Casino Royale, while Spectre’s opening sequence took Bond on a trail of destruction starting at Mexico City’s Gran Hotel, an 1899 Art Nouveau wonder that he also visited as Timothy Dalton in Licence to Kill (1989), where it was the El Presidente in the fictional Isthmus City.
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OTHER GREAT BOND LOCATIONS – THAILAND, ISTANBUL & JAPAN
Once the Bond franchise got underway in the 1960s, exotic location shoots became as much part of the recipe as wisecracks and bloodless mass shootouts. In most cases, the most memorable are one-offs: Scaramanga’s solar power plant and hall of mirrors on the rocky island Ko Tapu, near Phuket in Thailand for The Man With The Golden Gun (1974), the villain’s lair at the Lake Palace in Udaipur in Octopussy (1983) or Bond climbing the cliffs of Meteora, Greece, to reach the eyrie-like monastery of St Cyril’s in For Your Eyes Only (1981).
Occasionally, though, a movie has focused on one location. From Russia With Love (1963) made use of some of Istanbul’s greatest assets, from the Hagia Sophia to the Basilica Cistern, the colonnaded underground waterway Bond uses to access the Russian consulate, and the inevitable Grand Bazaar. He would return to the city in the Pierce Brosnan era for The World Is Not Enough (1999), where M (Judi Dench) is kept prisoner in Kiz Kulesi, an 11th-century lighthouse on the Bosphorus, and again for Skyfall (2012), with Daniel Craig’s Bond back in the Grand Bazaar, this time on the roof on a motorbike, before he falls from the train off the Varda Viaduct near Kiralan. Japan was the main destination for You Only Live Twice, Connery’s 1967 instalment. We see him at a ninja-training school set in the picturesque 17th-century Himeji Castle, and in the contrasting hi-tech HQ of Osato Chemicals, a Spectre front that was really the Sixties Hotel New Otani, famed for its revolving restaurant. Then, for the classic villain’s lair, Blofeld is based in Shinmoedake, a volcano in Kirishima National Park that was supposedly dormant but erupted in 2018.
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Daniel Craig as James Bond in Skyfall filmed in the Grand Bazaar, Istanbul
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Himeji Castle, Japan
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Mi6 Building, London
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Monastery Holy Trinity, Meteora, Greece
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Goldeneye, Jamaica
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Ice Q, Austria
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Christopher Lee and Roger Moore on the set of The Man With the Golden Gun. Filmed on Ko Tapu, Thailand
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The Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic
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Piz Gloria, Switzerland
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Sean Connery as James Bond in Goldfinger. Filmed at Stoke Park Country Club, England
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Villa del Balbianello, Italy
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Goldeneye, Jamaica
Taj Lake Palace Hotel, Udaipur
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Daniel Craig, Goldeneye, Jamaica
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Daniel Craig as James Bond in Spectre which was filmed in Mexico City
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