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Luxury Travel

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Luxury Travel

Visiting the best of Bond

To mark the 60th anniversary of the globetrotting secret agent James Bond on the big screen, Cassam Looch takes a closer look at one of his most iconic locations

This is a feature from Issue 13 of Charitable Traveller. 

Since first watching Roger Moore don a white safari suit and leap off hungry alligators in Live and Let Die, I’ve wanted to recreate many of the scenes in the James Bond series.

I’m probably too old (and rotund) to realistically fit into that outfit or leap anywhere these days, but I’ve been visiting locations featured in the films for a number of years. The most recent entry in the long-running franchise is No Time to Die, and as soon as its trailer was released, despite Covid delaying the theatrical release, I knew there was a new destination I had to get to as soon as I could. The stone city of Matera in Italy is a big part of the opening act and has previously featured in other films such as The Passion of the Christ and Mary Magdalene, but it’s the cultural impact of Bond that has catapulted Matera into the limelight.

Up until the 1980s, Matera was a forgotten relic in one of the poorest parts of Italy. The ancient cave dwellings and harsh cobblestone streets found in the Sassi (two districts dating back 7,000 years) were seen as an embarrassment, whereas today they’re deemed to be a charming commodity. It would be a stretch to suggest that cinema has rehabilitated the reputation of this small enclave in the southern region of Basilicata but the recent surge in interest here has certainly been noticeable once Hollywood took an interest.

Getting to the Sassi di Matera, the most interesting part of Matera for a curious tourist, isn’t as difficult as you might think. I flew into Bari and drove for less than an hour to get into the heart of the city. Largely by accident, I found myself in the large central square featured in No Time to Die, where Daniel Craig is seen performing tyre-screeching doughnuts to fend off evil assailants. I quietly pull off a three-point- turn and find my AirBnB for the night.

Residents are keen to talk about the production as the experience was a happy one for the locals. My host has lived here all her life and as she shows me to my room at Le Dodici Lune, which is carved into the stone that makes the city, she tells me the secret to how Bond drove around with such ease. Truckloads of Coca-Cola were poured onto the streets to give the vehicles the grip they needed to perform the stunts seen on screen!

Matera is just the latest in a long list of destinations Bond has visited throughout the years. A place special to the character and one that featured in the first film Dr. No, as well as in No Time to Die, is Jamaica. Author Ian Fleming set many of his 007 adventures here and his home has been turned into a luxury 10-person villa, the Fleming Villa, available to rent.

If a stay at Fleming Villa blows the budget, I highly recommend fans visit Sölden in Austria. This mountainous region was featured in Spectre, where the Ice Q restaurant was turned into a prestigious medical clinic. The glass building has an excellent vantage point that hangs over the edge of one of the peaks here and is an outstanding spot for lunch (if you can stomach it from the lofty seating). The real kicker is that producers of the film were so enamoured with the region they also helped build 007 Elements, the world’s only permanent immersive Bond experience.

This is a feature from Issue 13 of Charitable Traveller.