James Bond Filming Locations — Glen Coe, Lake Como, Siena and Montenegro

Daniel Craig's four Bond films — Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012) and No Time to Die (2021) — represent the franchise's most consistent and geographically coherent run of location work since the Connery era. The Craig films treated their locations as character rather than backdrop — the Scottish Highlands were not simply where Bond happened to drive; they were where Bond was from, in the specific emotional sense that a place can define a person. Lake Como was not simply where Bond recovered; it was where he allowed himself, briefly, to be happy. These distinctions matter, and they make the Craig era locations worth visiting with a different intention than simply recognising a famous building.

Location 01Glen Coe and Glen Etive, Scotland — Skyfall (2012)

Skyfall placed Bond's ancestral home in the Scottish Highlands — specifically in the landscape of Glen Coe and the adjacent Glen Etive — drawing on the revelation in On Her Majesty's Secret Service that Bond's father came from Glencoe. The drive sequence through the Highlands, Bond and M heading toward the Skyfall estate in the vintage Aston Martin, used the A82 road through Glen Coe past the mountains of Buachaille Etive Mòr and Buachaille Etive Beag, then the single-track road through Glen Etive to the loch at the valley's end.

One important clarification: the Skyfall Lodge itself — the stone building at the end of the valley — was a purpose-built set constructed at Hankley Common in Surrey, not in the Highlands. There is no Skyfall Lodge to visit in Glen Etive. What you can visit is the landscape that the drive sequence used, which is extraordinary. The Glen Etive road is a single-track road through one of the most spectacular Highland glens in Scotland, ending at a loch surrounded by mountains. The Buachaille — the great pyramid of a mountain at the head of Glen Coe — is visible from the A82 in a way that makes it impossible to pretend you are not in Scotland.

Glen Coe itself is a place of considerable historical weight beyond the Bond connection — the site of the 1692 massacre in which the MacDonald clan was killed by government troops, a piece of Scottish history that the landscape still carries. The visitor centre at the head of the glen provides the historical context. The National Trust for Scotland manages much of the glen and the surrounding mountains.

Glen Coe Guided Tour — Scotland

Guided tour through Glen Coe and Glen Etive — the Highland landscape Bond drives through in Skyfall. The Buachaille Etive Mòr at the head of the glen is unmistakable from the film.

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Location 02Lake Como, Italy — Casino Royale (2006)

Casino Royale used Lake Como — specifically the Villa del Balbianello on the Lavedo peninsula — as the location where Bond recovers after his capture and torture by Le Chiffre, and where his relationship with Vesper Lynd reaches its most tender and most doomed point. The Villa del Balbianello, a 18th-century villa with terraced gardens extending to the lake, appears in the film as the recovery clinic. It also appeared in Star Wars Episode II — the location scout clearly had a type — and is one of the most photographed buildings on Lake Como, which itself is one of the most photographed lakes in Europe.

Villa del Balbianello is owned by the Italian heritage organisation FAI and is open to visitors by boat from Lenno from Tuesday to Sunday between April and October. The gardens and loggia — the terraced outdoor space overlooking the lake where Bond and Vesper have their most significant conversations — are accessible to paying visitors. Arriving by boat from Lenno, approaching the villa from the lake as the production did, gives you the full visual experience that the film captured.

Lake Como itself — the third largest lake in Italy, surrounded by the Alps and the Prealps — is worth considerably more time than the Villa del Balbianello alone requires. The towns of Bellagio, Varenna and Como itself each justify a day. The ferry service connecting the lake's towns makes it possible to visit multiple locations without a car.

Flights to Milan for Lake Como

Fly to Milan Malpensa or Bergamo Orio al Serio. Lake Como is around an hour from Malpensa by train. Bergamo is closer to the eastern shore. Both work.

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Hotels on Lake Como

From Bellagio and Varenna to the town of Como itself. Staying on the lake puts you on the ferry network that connects all the Bond filming locations including Villa del Balbianello.

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Lake Como Cruise & Boat Tour

See Villa del Balbianello — Bond's Casino Royale recovery clinic — from the water, as the production approached it. The lake view of the villa is the one the film used.

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Location 03Siena, Italy — Quantum of Solace (2008)

Quantum of Solace opens with one of the franchise's most kinetic action sequences — a car chase through the narrow roads of the Tuscan countryside — before arriving in Siena during the Palio, the city's twice-yearly bareback horse race run around the Piazza del Campo. The film used the Palio as a backdrop for a rooftop chase and confrontation, placing Bond above the crowd watching one of the oldest sporting events in Europe.

The Palio di Siena has been run in the Piazza del Campo twice a year — on July 2nd and August 16th — since 1644. The race itself lasts approximately 90 seconds. The preparation, the pageantry and the passion surrounding it last considerably longer. Tickets for the Piazza del Campo viewing area sell out immediately and are extremely difficult to obtain legitimately. The free standing areas in the centre of the square fill hours before the race. Going to Siena for the Palio requires either significant advance planning, considerable patience or connections within the contrade — the city's historic districts, each of which enters a horse and rider and considers the race a matter of genuine existential importance.

Siena outside of Palio season is one of the most beautiful medieval cities in Italy — the Piazza del Campo, the Duomo, the Palazzo Pubblico — and is considerably more accessible. The rooftops above the Campo that Bond chases across in the film are private. The view of the Piazza from the Torre del Mangia — the city's medieval tower — is public, spectacular and deeply familiar to anyone who has watched the film.

Flights to Prague

Prague is the closest major airport to Karlovy Vary — about 130km west by car or coach. Direct flights from most UK airports. Allow an extra two hours for the onward journey.

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Grand Hotel Pupp — Karlovy Vary

The exterior of Casino Royale's Montenegro casino. A grand 18th-century spa hotel in the heart of Karlovy Vary. Stay where Bond supposedly played cards for the fate of the world.

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Location 04Montenegro — Casino Royale (2006)

Casino Royale's Montenegro casino sequences — the Le Chiffre poker game that forms the film's central set piece — were not actually filmed in Montenegro. The casino exterior is the Grand Hotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic, and most of the interior poker scenes were filmed in studios. However, several sequences were filmed in Montenegro itself, including the establishing shots of the coastal town and some exterior sequences.

Montenegro as a destination is worth visiting on its own considerable merits. The Bay of Kotor — a fjord-like coastal inlet surrounded by mountains — is one of the most dramatic coastal environments in Europe, with the medieval walled town of Kotor at its head. The Adriatic coast of Montenegro, including the resort town of Budva and the old town of Bar, offers a combination of historical architecture and coastal scenery that is less visited than the Croatian coast to the north and significantly less expensive. The country joined NATO in 2017 and has applied for EU membership, which has brought infrastructure investment and improved air connections from the UK.

Flights to Montenegro

Fly to Tivat — the closest airport to the Bay of Kotor, about 8km away — or Podgorica for the wider country. Direct flights from several UK airports in summer.

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Hotels in Bay of Kotor, Montenegro

The medieval walled town of Kotor sits at the head of one of Europe's most dramatic coastal inlets. Hotels range from boutique properties in the old town to waterfront resorts on the bay.

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The Craig Era's Emotional Geography

The Craig films understood something that their predecessors occasionally forgot: that the most effective use of a location is not the most spectacular one. Glen Coe's power in Skyfall is not that it is beautiful — it is — but that it explains something about who Bond is and where he comes from, which no amount of Alpine action sequences had previously achieved. Lake Como works in Casino Royale not because the villa is beautiful — it is — but because it is the place where Bond allows himself to be something other than a weapon, briefly, before the film takes that away from him.

The best Bond locations do two things simultaneously: they are extraordinary places that justify the journey entirely on their own terms, and they mean something specific to the story being told. Glen Coe. Lake Como. The Siena rooftops. Montenegro's bay. These are all places worth visiting. They are also, in the Craig era, places that mean something beyond their own geography. That is the difference between a location and a setting. The Craig films mostly got this right.