Licence to thrill

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.

‘Roger Moore rides a souped-up gondola down the Grand Canal’

By 1979, had been filmed on location. In a thrilling scene, Roger Moore rides a souped-up gondola down the Grand Canal being chased, 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 collapsing into the Canal.