The Tropicana Hotel was the height of luxury, and empty patches of desert surrounded classic (and now demolished) Strip hotels like The Dunes. The Las Vegas scenes mostly show a city that's now long gone. Down the mountain are the towns of Grindelwald, where Bond and his soon-to-be bride, Tracy di Vicenzo, escaped terrifying henchwoman Fraulein Bunt and Blofeld's orange-clad assassins, and Lauterbrunnen, the site of the stock car race.Ī view to die for inside Piz Gloria (and if you count what happened in the movie, I mean that literally).Īfter George Lazenby's turn in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Connery reprised the role, bouncing from Amsterdam to Las Vegas to foil the further plans of old nemesis Blofeld. You can have a meal in the restaurant and browse the museum with memorabilia from the filming. Now a revolving restaurant named Piz Gloria (of course), the building looks much as it did in the film for which it served as the allergy clinic where Blofeld was making a bioweapon. As it roughly matched Blofeld's Piz Gloria hideout described in the book, the producers financed its completion. The complex was still under construction when the film's location scouts discovered it in 1968. Piz Gloria isn't shy about its Bond connection.
I mean … how can you not love a place with tremendous Alpine views that's accessible only by an aerial tramway or a helicopter? In choosing Piz Gloria, Spectre's Ernst Stavro Blofeld moved up in the world.
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The 9,744-foot peak in the Bernese Alps is featured in my favorite Bond movie, and it's the best villain's lair in the series - yes, even better than the hollowed-out volcano with the monorail in You Only Live Twice. But when I return, Schilthorn will be my first stop. I've only been to a corner of Switzerland (Geneva) so I have yet to do the country justice. You only visit twice: Later Bond films to show Istanbul ( not Constantinople) include The World is not Enough and Skyfall (more on that film below), but in both cases it gets less screen time. The Basilica Cistern: Sorry, tours under the Soviet Embassy aren't available. The Basilica Cistern can feel like a bit of a tourist trap, but it's still pretty cool.
The 30-foot-high ceiling is supported by 336 marble columns, two of which have bases with the face of Medusa. Built in the fifth century, the cistern has a massive scale - 453 feet long by 213 feet high - and can hold 2.8 million cubic feet of water.
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Your next stop is nearby at the Basilica Cistern, where Bond and MI6 station chief Kerim Bey embark on a boat to sneak under the Soviet Consulate (sadly, the periscope they used to observe the consulate's secret meeting was movie fiction). Keep in mind the Hagia Sophia was built almost 1,500 years ago. Yeah, there are exhibits to read, but just gawking is fine. Walk in, stand under the 183-foot dome and just take it in. Now a museum, it has an immense scale that's as dazzling and as impressive as the Parthenon or the Colosseum. After the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453, it became a mosque and gained minarets. Completed in 537, the Hagia Sophia served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral when the city was called Constantinople and was the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Sean Connery traverses many of the city's top tourist sights like the Grand Bazaar and the Hagia Sophia, where one of the film's pivotal scenes - he gets the plans for the Soviet embassy from Tatiana Romanova - takes place. The ancient city at the mouth of the Bosporus is as much a character in the second Bond installment as Bond or snarling henchman Donald Grant. +47 more See all photos From Russia With Love
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