Since his first voyage to Italy in 1963’s From Russia With Love James Bond has travelled the length and breadth of Italy from the ancient city of Rome to the wintry chills of Cortina d’Ampezzo and the sunnier climes of Sardinia and Matera As well as providing scenic beauty and glamour the Italian backdrops have amped 007’s drama from pursuits through the narrow canals of Venice and foot chases over the perilous roofs of Siena James Bond’s first of three forays to Venice appears at the end of From Russia With Love 007 (Sean Connery) fights and kills SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) in a hotel room with a view over San Giorgio Maggiore Bond and Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) later share a kiss in a water taxi under the iconic Bridge of Sighs Director Terence Young and a film crew only spent a day in Venice Connery and Bianchi performed their scenes against a back screen projection at Pinewood Studios in July 1963 while Piazzetta San Marco leading to Piazza San Marco was used as a backdrop for the film’s end credits Venice played a much bigger role in Moonraker Bond (Roger Moore) is on the hunt for Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) which takes him to the Venini Glass Works located at the Piazzetta dei Leoncini next to Saint Mark’s Basilica Coming under attack on the canals by Drax’s assassins Bond turns his gondola (nicknamed the Bondola by the crew) into a hovercraft and travels across St “I had to drive this 80-foot-long gondola across St where there were thousands of tourists who didn’t know there was a film going on,” recalled Roger Moore They eventually gave me a little klaxon to warn people.” Bond returned to Venice 27 years later with Casino Royale 007 (Daniel Craig) enters Venice on a luxury yacht with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) Vesper double crosses Bond and a chase ensues through Piazza San Marco and various alleyways leading to a battle inside a collapsing palazzo which was shot mostly at Pinewood it’s not the easiest to film in,” recalled director Martin Campbell who had to shoot around hordes of tourists For the sequence of Bond and Vesper sailing up the Grand Canal on a 54ft (16 metre) yacht named Spirit the vessel was sailed from England to Nassau The Bahamas to film the scene with Bond and Vesper enjoying time together before setting sail for Venice An aerial unit captured the yacht entering Venice the first boat allowed to sail on the Grand Canal since it was prohibited for outside traffic 350 years ago The mast was taken up and down to move under the bridges sailing a yacht up the Grand Canal,” said Daniel Craig I don’t know if they really do have tailbacks in Venice but they had tailbacks that day.”  Bond (Roger Moore) and Soviet agent Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) arrive in Costa Smeralda Sardinia to infiltrate the operation of shipping tycoon Karl Stromberg (Curt Jürgens) The island in the Mediterranean plays host to a spectacular chase as 007’s Lotus Esprit is pursued by cars The only way for the camera to keep pace with the Lotus Esprit was to mount it in another Lotus Esprit Also shot in Sardinia was Bond’s journey to Stromberg’s aquatic base Atlantis on a wet bike The prototype was built by Nelson Tyler with a 65 horsepower two cycle engine capable of speeds of 50 miles per hour “Nobody had ever seen one before,” recalled Roger Moore Bond’s next Italian sortie saw him enter the winter wonderland of Cortina d’Ampezzo Willy Bogner shot the ski sequences where Bond (Roger Moore) is chased down a mountain ending up in a pursuit down a bobsled run When the unit arrived in Cortina in January 1981 “It was January — but there wasn’t any snow in the village.” Tom Pevsner and his men got a convoy of trucks that fetched snow in the mountains and dumped it in Cortina,” said Michael G then working as an assistant to his step-father Lake Como appears twice in Daniel Craig’s first outing as Bond shot at the Villa del Balbianello near Lenno sees 007 recuperating from torture at the hands of Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) and forge a deeper connection with Vesper “Lake Como is one of the most beautiful spots in the world,” said producer Michael G “This is where the love affair between Bond and Vesper begins.” The second occurs when Bond tracks down and shoots Mr White (Jesper Christensen) and Craig utters the line “The name’s Bond The moment was filmed at the private residence Villa la Gaeta in Sant’Abbondio located near the resorts of San Siro and Menaggio The pre-credit car chase sequence between Bond’s Aston Martin DBS and Alfa Romeo 159s was captured in two distinct Italian locations: on the roads and tunnels around Lake Garda then in Carrara for a pursuit through a quarry The sequence employed seven Aston Martins and eight Alfa Romeos The tunnel chase was complicated by the tunnel only being 28 ft wide in parts “When there are over 40 cars going through it at the speeds we were doing it becomes a technical challenge.” After ten days shooting at Lake Garda the unit moved to Massa to take advantage of the Carrara marble quarry “Some of the mountain roads we were on were quite high up and very narrow,” remembered Powell The quarry was 3,500ft above sea level and we had cars coming down going round corners at speed with a 750 ft drop next to them.” Bond goes in pursuit of M’s double crossing bodyguard Mitchell (Glenn Forster) and gets caught up in the crowds watching the world famous Palio horse race at Piazza del Campo in the Tuscan city of Siena the horse race had been captured months before principal photography began by a second unit crew “The Palio horse race is only about 90 seconds,” recalled First Assistant Director Michael Lerman “We had ten camera crews shooting from rooftops out of windows and on the track itself.” The chase continues over the picture-postcard Sienese rooftops While the initial idea had been to build the rooftops on the backlot at Pinewood scheduling meant the team had to approach the Sienese City officials to take over the rooftops for a couple of months for filming “I did a 25-foot jump,” Daniel Craig remembered “It’s not that scary jumping off the side of a building with a wire on then they put a moving bus underneath and it suddenly becomes something else.” Bond (Daniel Craig)’s sojourn to Rome is the series’ first visit to the Eternal City The funeral of Marco Sciarra was staged at the Museum of Roman Civilisation Also shot there were night exteriors for Lucia’s villa at Villa Di Fiorano and the Aston Martin DB10 speeding past the Coliseum The centre-piece is a duel between Bond’s Aston Martin DB10 and SPECTRE operative Hinx’s (Dave Bautista) Jaguar C-X75 through the cobbled streets and towpaths “We had two of the fastest cars in the world travelling at night at speed through what is near enough a world heritage site,” said Executive Producer “Via Nomentana was one of the longest city lock-downs our location department had ever done It was about 3 kilometres of main roads entering Rome,” recalled Associate Producer “This means that you are employing hundreds of blockers to make sure no people or vehicles wander into shot.” A highlight of the chase sees the cars go down the Scala de Pinedo steps – which were reinforced for their own protection – and onto the towpath by the river Tiber which just prior to filming had been prone to flooding Shooting around such beautiful antiquity meant the filmmakers had to take precautions during production and adapt as necessary The sequence ends with the Aston Martin flying into the water and Bond parachuting to safety at Ponte Sisto “We always try to do things on-screen that have never been done before and I think the Romans will feel very proud as well,” said Barbara Broccoli during production Bond 25’s pre-credit sequence sees 007 (Daniel Craig) and Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) travel to the city of Matera in Southern Italy eight of which were built by Aston Martin and the special effects team The other two were original 1964 DB5’s used in previous Bond films When SPECTRE agents surround 007 and Madeleine in the Piazza San Giovanna Batista firing bullets from its front lights and a smoke screen from the back as it spins round before peeling off “Matera is tiered like an amphitheatre so whenever the DB5 did a stunt at the end we heard the locals hollering and giving us a round of applause,” recalled Special Effects Supervisor Chris Corbould Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema on lensing Daniel Craig’s fourth mission Limited edition anniversary remastered and expanded double CD sets James Bond and related logos are trademarks of Danjaq Sign up for 007 news from the world of James Bond Receive exclusive updates and content – from behind-the-scenes stories to the latest product launches – plus film clips and trivia from the Bond archive touches on the avant-garde and in particular Futurism (with two paintings by Ram and Thayaht) and then arrives at the season of the return to order up to metaphysics with the closing of the itinerary entrusted to artists such as Carlo Carrà There is also a large room dedicated to sculpture with works by Arturo Martini an important space is reserved for Versilia painters or at any rate for all those artists who worked on the Apuan and Versilia coasts and to reopen Palazzo Cucchiari to the public with this exhibition which for many reasons we can say is exceptional,” said Franca Conti “It is no mystery to anyone that the exhibition we have been working on for the past few years and with which we intended to resume activity after the closure of the pandemic was another one would rely on our friendship and collaborative relationship with the Hermitage Museum in St this collaboration suddenly and brutally broke down more properly to ’rewrite’ our plans altogether which was a planning idea for the next few years One of the lenders called it a ’cultured and popular’ exhibition: we hope that this is indeed the case because our intention has always been precisely to make great art available to everyone.” The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by the Giorgio Conti Foundation with texts by Massimo Bertozzi and Daniela Ferrari Finestre Sull’Arte is a media partner of the exhibition There are six sections into which the exhibition at Palazzo Cucchiari is divided It begins with A World of Sand: Horizons between Land and Sea: the exhibition begins by describing the sea of realism investigated in its atmospheric phenomena (the refraction of light on the waves sunsets and so on) by artists who painted substantially in the open air and in full light The section thus aligns painters who depicted the sea in all its beauty (Fattori’s seascapes Plinio Nomellini’s effects) to arrive at the experimentalisms of artists such as Benvenuto Benvenuti The second section is entitled The objects of the sea: nature remembered: a part of the exhibition reserved for still lif es painted by.. collectors of round stones and stained glass painters who looked at the wrecks of ancient shipwrecks attracted by the colorful shimmer of fish and crustaceans A singular still life by Cagnaccio di San Pietro opens a section featuring the fish of Arturo Dazzi and the corals of Gino Romiti: the gifts of the sea that offered strong suggestions to the great painters of the early 20th century such as Arturo Dazzi’s famous Sailor and Carlo Fontana’s Commander the visiting itinerary continues in the first two rooms with Andar per mare: constraint and adventure: a section devoted to the gestures and colors of the men who live and work on the sea and whose daily lives pass from nature to history reflected in the mirror of poetry and art are Ludovico Tommasi’s sails waiting to set sail Mario Puccini’s views of Livorno harbor and Galileo Chini’s Viareggio dockyard Also noteworthy is the presence of a masterpiece by Nomellini displayed together with its preparatory drawing A large section entitled Andare al mare: la villeggiatura brings us to the most carefree moment of the sea: the vacation on the Tuscan shores the pastel colors of the deckchairs and umbrellas the gray of the sandy shores and the green of the pine forests: these motifs become a great spur for artists such as Carlo Carrà and Beppe Guzzi who tell of days spent on the beach of solitary cabins standing out among the pine trees Closing is the section The Sea of Imagination: Myths and Visions which tells of a sea that only in appearance is the one imagined but is actually the sea of closeness because it it lurks in everyone’s memory the one where the best part of the past is deposited nourishing the dreams and visions of artists such as Edita Broglio and Giorgio de Chirico (who closes the exhibition with the Horses on the Seashore at the Mart in Rovereto) Tickets: full price € 10; concessions € 8; groups 10-29 people € 8; 30 and up € 7; schools € 4 (2 chaperones free for school groups); free Youth under 8 accompanied by parents, handicapped persons and chaperone, journalists with national ID. For information call +39 0585 72355, email info@palazzocucchiari.it or visit the exhibition website.