There’s something unshakeable about 007’s bond with Venice. But even though he’s visited on no fewer than four separate occasions, are we any clearer about why he keeps returning? Fellow Venice-addict David Lowbridge-Ellis, our Editor-in-Chief, takes a seven stop tour through the lagoon (an inflatable gondola is helpful but not essential) to uncover why the Bond stories keep being drawn back to this most unreal of cities.
Spare a thought for James Bond’s passport. One of the hardest working official documents in the world, it’s easier to make a list of countries whose immigration officials it hasn’t been manhandled by than those it has. And yet, if you were to make a list of the places it – and its owner – has revisited, this would be significantly shorter. Venice would be near the top of that list, on a par with places like Istanbul and Jamaica.
When we normal people plan our holidays (although we don’t find too many normal people in the Bond fan business, least of all ourselves), we think in terms of ‘destinations’. Not James Bond; he’s merely passing through. The places Bond revisits most often are some of the most liminal locations on Earth. They are places where people of all kinds – and governments – come and go. Perfect for James Bond, for whom stillness is poison to the soul.
Bond first passes through Venice in the Fleming short story Risico, appearing in print in 1960 in the For Your Eyes Only collection. If you’ve not read the story, you’ve seen the guts of it in the Kristatos/Colombo rivalry in the film of For Your Eyes Only, although the film doesn’t have a scene in Venice. The short story has additional attractions which make it worth your while, including the character of Colombo first meeting Bond while wearing just a small red Speedo, which is certainly a choice, and perhaps not something Topol would have been up for.
The book of For Your Eyes Only is subtitled as ‘five secret occasions in the life of James Bond’ and each of these tales has an off-the-books feel, with 007 finding himself drawn into matters – or milieu – which aren’t really his usual line of business. All of the best James Bond stories have an uncanny quality; the world he encounters is both oddly familiar and reassuringly unsettling. Risico is a good example of this, with Bond working outside of MI6’s jurisdiction and getting embroiled in a face off between competing smugglers, eventually choosing to side with the less obviously villainous of the two.
Most Bond fans will have a mental picture of Venice thanks to its starring roles in the films of Moonraker and Casino Royale, as well as its more fleeting appearance at the end of From Russia With Love. Sadly for Sean and Daniela, they never did have a chance to ride in a gondola under the Bridge of Sighs but instead had to act against rear projected second unit footage at Pinewood. But however it’s depicted on screen, Venice is never just a backdrop in story terms. Each time it is chosen as a Bond location it is done so to comment on the action. After the cathartic killing of Rosa Klebb, a dark threat still hangs over the lovers. As they ride through one of the most romantic places on the planet, Bond unspools the SPECTRE-filmed footage from his and Tatiana’s Istanbul hotel room encounter, dropping it into the lagoon. Now safe from the threat of – what we would call nowadays – revenge porn, we can relax. The jarring cut as Bond looks over the film is the result of film censors finding Bond’s narcissistic remark – “What a performance”, echoing Grant’s line from the train compartment – too heady for 1963. But the essence of the idea remains in the finished film. No wonder the ending of the book was switched from a Paris location to Venice. No offence to Paris, but even the City of Lights can’t rival The Floating City in the sex and death stakes.
Hitting the sweet spot of sensuality mixed with danger is the DNA of the Bond series’ success. Our fascination with beautifully decaying Venice rests on comparable foundations, in a metaphorical and literal sense: the resplendent city is built on millions of wooden piles, thrust deep into the mud. Venice has existed for more than 1500 years in a state of perpetual impermanence. And its continued existence should never be taken for granted. Creative solutions have had to be found to stop it all from coming to a watery end. The acqua alta (high tide) which inundates walkways across the city, is more frequent than ever, especially in winter. Is Venice sinking or is the sea rising, possibly exacerbated by Climate Change? Probably both.
While no cinematic depiction of Venice replicates the feeling of being there, for me Casino Royale comes the closest. David Arnold’s sweeping but sad score sells the romance of a place – and a relationship – that always feels like it’s on borrowed time.
You could contest that Bond doesn’t choose to revisit Venice. Instead he’s compelled to go there because that’s where his missions take him. But in Casino Royale, he’s floating around the world, on unofficial sabbatical from MI6. Why does he choose to take Vesper to Venice? Is it make or break?
Perhaps because, like most of us, I take far too many cues from James Bond than is probably healthy in my real-life, I chose Venice as the first place to go on holiday with my boyfriend, who is now my husband. Did I think that, like Bond, it would be make or break? Would Venice decide for us if the relationship was to last? Everything or nothing?
Was I mad? Or just madly in love?
Venice is, inherently, a bit mad. No matter how many times you read about the engineering that makes Venice possible, it can feel like you’re living in science fiction, not science fact. A bit like Moonraker, Venice shouldn’t work, but it does. A bit like Moonraker, there are times when Venice all gets a bit too much and you struggle to take it seriously. Eventually, you decide it’s better not to bother and let it wash over you. There are only so many times you can be left open-mouthed by turning a corner of a narrow alleyway to discover yet another sumptuous sight. But then it keeps happening anyway. After a few days in Venice it’s natural to feel glutted by the place and you need to cleanse your palate. Fortunately, Venice provides ways of doing this within the bounds of its own lagoon. Other worlds are waiting for us.
Let’s take that journey, starting with the most obviously Bondian things we can do in Venice. It would be churlish not to after all; iconic things are iconic for a reason. But then let’s leave the tourist trails, in search of adventure. And then, at the end of this seven stop tour, let’s see if we end up being as thrilled with this city as Bond is.
001. Start by taking a boat down the Grand Canal (Q-enhanced gondola optional)
Across the whole of Venice there are more than 150 canals. James Bond has traversed the same one at least twice. We shouldn’t brand Bond with having a lack of originality; however many times they’ve been to Venice, everyone ends up back on the Grand Canal eventually.
In Moonraker, we see Roger Moore’s Bond surreptitiously propelling a gondola down the Grand Canal at night before sneaking into Drax’s laboratory (in sharp contrast with the histrionics of that earlier gondola scene).
The Canal Grande has a more inflated (but not inflatable) role in Casino Royale, where Daniel Craig pilots a yacht down it, something which is not permitted in real life, even if you are lucky enough to be able to afford a yacht.
The best – and by far the cheapest – way to experience the Grand Canal for ourselves is via vaporetto (water bus). They depart every few minutes, running up and down the Grand Canal, from the train/coach station down to St. Mark’s Square and vice versa. Bond and Vesper travel from the direction of the Adriatic Sea, crossing the lagoon and entering the Grand Canal not far from St. Mark’s Square, going up past the Rialto Bridge. Whichever way we go – south to north or north to south – it’s an intoxicating journey through centuries of history and one we – like Bond – will want to take multiple times.
Let’s go…
002. Walk/wheel/run to St. Mark’s Square
Although riding vaporetti is very pleasurable, they’re mostly useful for getting to other islands (which we’ll come to later in this tour). It’s usually far faster – and more practical – just to walk everywhere.
Not for everyone though. It’s important to address the fact that, with the densest concentration of bridges anywhere (more than 450 of them), Venice is not the most accessibility-friendly city. The irony is that, when Venice was first built, in the middle of the first millennium, Venice’s canals were crossed with ramps rather than steps because horses and mules were used everywhere. Most of these ramps have been replaced with steps over the centuries, making traversing much of Venice more challenging than it should be for some.
Fortunately, a key Bond location which features in every Venice-set Bond story, is accessible to everyone: St. Mark’s Square. And the good news is, unlike a lot of Venice’s filming locations, it’s impossible to miss: just follow the endless streams of tourists.
What’s especially impressive about the scenes shot in St. Mark’s Square in both Moonraker and Casino Royale is that they happen in the middle of the day, when the Piazza is straining to contain its sheer volume of daytrippers (the second unit footage of St. Mark’s in From Russia With Love is shot during St. Mark’s busy period too). If we do want to experience St. Mark’s as Bond did in these stories, we will head over to St. Mark’s at midday. But we will probably regret it. I suggest we visit St. Mark’s either before the day visitors arrive or when they have gone home, in the evening. Sound like a plan?
For people who are able to do so, St. Mark’s Square is a dramatic place to go running during its less busy periods. It’s practically deserted at dawn – and what a place to watch the sunrise! It’s up to the individual runner, of course, whether they channel their inner Bond, imagining they’re trailing the person who has just broken their heart, uncertain of the action they’ll take when they catch up with them. Venice is the ideal location for real – or imagined – heartbreak.
Venice as a whole is a surprisingly great destination for runners and there are numerous official running events, including marathons. As long as we’re careful around some of the blind corners, it’s exhilarating dashing through the calli and campi, especially if we soundtrack our run with some of our favourite spy movie chase music. And if we run into a few dead ends and have to turn back, then it’s all part of the fun.
While we’re on dead ends… let’s manage our expectations. While Venice may feel like the ultimate Bond destination, we shouldn’t go there expecting much of the Bond onscreen geography to match up, especially in St. Mark’s. The nighttime St. Mark’s scene in Moonraker has an orchestra and an opera singer serenading visitors beneath the 15th Century clock (Torre dell’Orologio) that Bond hurls Chang through. In reality, the orchestra would be blocking up the entrance to the square’s busiest thoroughfare. And we Casino Royale devotees may be disappointed to find that there is no branch of the Basel bank in St. Mark’s. Furthermore, the hotel interior which Bond and Vesper walk through arm in arm before everything goes horribly wrong was shot hundreds of miles away in Prague – such is the magic of movies!
The part of Piazza San Marco which does match its on screen location is the entrance to the Sotoportego del Cavaletto. This is where Bond does a double take, catching sight of Vesper in her red dress as she crosses the Ponte (bridge) del Cavaletto. It’s one of the easier locations to find via Google Maps.
Google Maps is fairly helpful in Venice, but becomes less reliable amidst the tangle of the city’s narrower thoroughfares. Some are as svelte as two and half feet wide, which plays more havoc with GPS than Henry Gupta with a stolen encoder. While I derive satisfaction in finding exact locations from films and books as much as any Bond fan, we could easily drive ourselves mad trying to pin them down in Venice. Unless we have oodles of time and inclination, let’s stick with big ones. And they don’t come any bigger than Piazza San Marco.
003. Have a smashing time at the Murano Glass Museum
“They put it back together!” That was my first thought – thankfully not voiced aloud – when I first clapped eyes on the 15th Century blue glass bowl I’d only previously seen smashed into fragments during the Bond vs. Chang fight scene in Moonraker.
The real bowl resides in the Glass Museum on the island of Murano, ten minutes away via vaporetto. Incidentally, the Venini shop Roger visits in the film is also now on Murano. It moved following Covid, the owners no longer being able to afford the rent on St. Mark’s Square. The shop in St. Mark’s still sells Venini glassware, although it’s owned by another company.
Full confession: glass production is pretty low on my list of interests and I only visited the Glass Museum to see Moonraker’s blue bowl in the flesh (more accurately: held behind inches of glass, well protected from Kendo masters intent on bludgeoning British spies to death).
Whatever your level of interest in vitreous matters, before we leave the Museum, let’s make sure we visit Room 10, which is actually past the gift shop and the exit, meaning many miss it. This large space features a stunning collection of cocktail receptacles from across the 20th Century and beyond, some of which are wildly inventive creations. It’s enough to make us crave a libation…
004. Recreate Bond’s booziest bar crawl (although please drink responsibly!)
Bond doesn’t visit any Venice bars whatsoever in the films, although in Moonraker he does share a bottle of Bollinger with Dr Goodhead in her suite at the Hotel Danieli. For those of us fascinated by the drinks of Bond it’s frustrating that we never do find out the vintage (unlikely to be ‘69 as she wasn’t expecting him).
While the Danieli has several bars, including a terrace overlooking the lagoon (not open in winter), Bond doesn’t stop for a quick one at any of them. Nor does he ever have a drink at the Gritti Palace hotel, despite staying there in Risico. In this booze-soaked tale, Bond does frequent Venice’s Big Three; Harry’s Bar, Florian and Quadri. All of them are very close, being within a 100m or so (as the double-taking pigeon flies) of each other.
Harry’s is the relative outlier but we find it easily, down a side street just off St. Mark’s Square. Previous patrons have included Orson Welles, Gary Cooper, Maria Callas, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway and, of course, Ian Fleming himself, who visited Venice for his 50th birthday. We find inside that nothing has changed since the 1930s, aside from the price. Expect to pay upwards of 20 Euros for a Martini (the driest in the lagoon, with a 10:1 gin:vermouth ratio) or a Bellini, which was first served on these premises. But you get what you pay for. In a similar price range are Florian and Quadri, flanking opposite sides of St. Mark’s Square itself. Drinks at these estimable establishments come with the added value of being the best spots in the city for people-watching (or, if we’re in a Bondian mindset, scanning the crowds to make sure we’ve not been followed).
Bond drinks at all three – Harry’s, Florian, Quadri – in a single evening, which is not advised, unless we want to end up pulling a Victor Tourjanksy. A drink at each is an experience to be relished, not raced through. And if we don’t drink booze or we’re watching our intake, the non-alcoholic selections are well-considered. The hot chocolate at Florian is to die for. If we are up for a cocktail at the Quadri, I recommend the J-Tini Martini (saffron-infused gin, licorice-rim, gold leaf), which is as intriguing to drink as it is aesthetically arresting.
005. Pay our respects to Vesper Lynd
Casino Royale was the film which reignited my love of Bond after me and the series went on a break for a couple of years in my early 20s. It’s a long story which I’ve delved into elsewhere, but essentially the ending of that film resonated deeply with me. Because the tragic denouement takes place in Venice, it meant that I would always have strong feelings towards the city.
It might sound faintly (or more than faintly) ridiculous, but the area just north of the Rialto bridge where, in the film, the house collapses into the Grand Canal, taking Vesper down with it, feels like a site of pilgrimage for me. I come here every time I visit Venice. With my not being religious – unless being an acolyte of 007 counts – this is the closest I get to holy ground.
That Casino Royale is a work of fiction and the collapsing house was a CGI creation, mapped over an unprepossessing real-life building (in actuality a two star hotel), is immaterial to me.
Let’s head there together and see if we feel the same.
The nearest vaporetto stop is Rialto Mercato. There’s a bar restaurant here, Osteria Al Pesador. Take a seat and order Spritzes.
[Important Spritz sidenote: I had my first ever Spritz in Venice, at this exact location, in 2010, with the man who would become my husband. I recommend you do the same (I mean have a Spritz, not marry my husband – he’s taken). Spritzes have become ubiquitous in the UK in the last decade or so but, for the uninitiated, it’s Prosecco and an aperitif with a dash of sparkling water. The aperitif is up to you: Aperol (from Padua) is most widely available; Campari (from Novara, near Milan) is bitterly delectable; Select (from Venice itself) is most traditional (the juniper berries make it pleasingly redolent of a Martini). Some prefer their Spritzes with Limoncello. Although some would complain that’s stretching the concept a bit far it’s not the abomination it might at first appear.]
So let’s order a Spritz. Order two. Or – if our livers are still feeling lithe and ready to go after the Risico-inspired bar crawl from earlier – try them all.
Whatever we order, let’s remember to raise a glass to the memory of Ms Lynd. She may have been interred in Matera (and posthumously blown to bits, bless her) but she chose to end her life here. Salute!
006. Visit James Bond islands
I’m not talking about ‘James Bond Island’ (aka Khao Phing Kan, in Thailand, seen in The Man With The Golden Gun and Tomorrow Never Dies) but islands in the Venice lagoon which would make memorable Bond locations. There are several worth adding to any Bond fan’s itinerary, including Burano, which is famed for its brightly-coloured buildings. These would make a sensational backdrop for an action scene. Burano is at the other end of the lagoon from the main island of Venice (technically, what we think of as ‘Venice island’ is not an island as there’s been a railway bridge there for nearly two hundred years, connecting it to the mainland, but everyone thinks of it as an island).
Burano is easily accessible by vaporetti and the journey, which takes around 45 minutes, is worth taking. On our way we will espy abandoned islands with crumbling buildings, giving off a vibe similar to that of Silva’s ruined domicile in Skyfall.
Another of my favourite islands with Bond vibes – and I’m aware how macabre this may sound but bear with me – is the island of the dead. San Michele has been Venice’s cemetery since 1807. Literally no one resides here besides those who have expired. So why should we pay a visit? For a start, it’s evocative of the many scenes in Bond stories set in cemeteries (especially Spectre’s). But it’s deeper than that: death is a central concern of the Bond series (just skim your eyes down that list of titles) and is no doubt part of the series’ ongoing success. Surrounding ourselves with death reminds us to value the time we have left, because we don’t have all the time in the world.
And if all that sounds a bit heavy, the good news is that San Michele is only a couple of minutes away from Venice’s main island (not an island), so when we’ve had our fill of death, we can hop on a waterbus and head back over to our favourite bar or cafe for another rejuvenating Spritz or espresso. Live and let live!
007. Savour some Risico business on the Lido
This is not on any Venice sightseeing itineraries I’ve ever seen but it’s a must for Bond fans, and I’d say everyone if they have half a day to explore off the beaten track. It was one of our favourite things my husband and me did on our most recent trip.
While travel brochures may associate the James Bond lifestyle with glamorous high-living, Bond’s moments of great luxury are just that: only momentary (something Fleming takes pains to point out in the opening line of Live and Let Die). As Bond’s adventures continue, he finds himself increasingly drawn into uncanny situations, discovering places which have an off-kilter feel to them.
While Venice has plenty of these places – and it’s probably this that makes it feel so ‘Bondian’ to me – nowhere in the lagoon is more uncanny than Alberoni.
The middle section of Fleming’s short story Risico takes place in this “curiously deserted world”, on the tip of Venice’s barrier island, the Lido. All these decades later, it’s exactly as Fleming describes it (minus the landmines).
Fleming sums it up as follows:
“The whole area is strange and melancholy and in extraordinary contrast to the gay carnival world of Venice.”
Indeed it is.
We can get to Alberoni easily from the main island. We just take the number 1 vaporetto across to the Lido and any of the regular buses down to the end of the island. We get off at the Alberoni Ca’Rossa stop, right in the centre of town, and almost precisely where Bond starts his mission…
From the jetty, we take (as Bond does) the “half-mile dusty walk” to the Bagni Alberoni where his contact is waiting. It’s clearly signposted. On his walk, Bond takes in “bankrupt housing developments” and leftover hardware from the Second World War. We see all of this too, as well as a luxurious golf course which Fleming describes – accurately – as being “surrounded by a high wire fence hung at intervals, as if it protected something of great value or secrecy”. Adding to the incongruity, the golf course is home to dozens of peacocks, which Fleming doesn’t mention, so they must be a new addition.
What Bond finds – and what we will too – at the beach are buildings “so derelict that [he] could not imagine it doing business even at the height of the summer season”. At the edge of the sea he looks left (“the wide empty sand swept away in a slight curve towards the Lido proper”) and right (“half a mile of beach terminating in the sea-wall”). Let’s do the same, then follow Bond’s route to the sea wall. When we get there we will concur with Bond/Fleming that it “stretched like a finger out into the silent mirrored sea, and at intervals along its top were the flimsy derricks of the octopus fishermen”.
The story ends with Bond running along this sea wall, evading three henchmen (one of whom is blown up with landmines leftover from the war) before being captured.
While this fate doesn’t befall us, we do find our walk along the sea wall otherworldly, especially if we are doing it on a quintessentially-Venetian winter’s day; the various military installations and weather devices looming out of the rolling fog, the sun never quite managing to burn it off. Whatever the weather, we find ourselves savouring, on Alberoni’s sea wall, this “curiously deserted world”. It’s impossible to get lost on this path and, conveniently, right at the end, we emerge to find a small bus station, where we will be waiting only a few minutes to be returned, back to the real world. Well, as ‘real’ as Venice ever is.
David’s Venice travel tips
I would always choose to stay in Venice, rather than visit for the day. It’s much more pleasant, letting you experience even the busiest areas unoccupied by armies of tourists. With Venice accommodation, supply usually outstrips demand so there are nearly always bargains to be had, even in summer. In Risico, Bond maintains that the best months to visit Venice are May and October, but it’s fascinating at any time of the year.
Last modified: 13 January 2026
