GoldenEye: From the Verzasca Dam to Arecibo

GoldenEye opens in 1986 with Bond and Alec Trevelyan infiltrating a Soviet chemical weapons lab in Arkhangelsk. The lab is really the Contra Dam, also called the Verzasca Dam, in Ticino, Switzerland. Bond's 220 m bungee jump off its face was performed by stuntman Wayne Michaels and was voted the best movie stunt of all time in a 2002 Sky Movies poll. Soon after the film's release the dam's owners leased access to a commercial bungee operator, and over 10,000 people have since jumped the 220 m drop.

Visitor guidance: A commercial operator runs bungee jumps from the dam; check its booking and conditions locally.

Nine years later, Bond is in Monte Carlo, where Xenia Onatopp hijacks a Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopter during a military demonstration. The film shot its casino scenes and the helicopter display here, and Bond arrives at the Casino de Monte Carlo on Place du Casino. The mountain car race with Onatopp was filmed far inland, on the roads around Thorenc, about 20 miles north of Grasse. The casino building was completed in 1863 and expanded in 1878–79 to designs of Charles Garnier, the architect of the Paris opera house.

Visitor guidance: The casino has themed rooms with different entry and dress code criteria, so check before you go.

Back in London, Bond joins MI6 staff monitoring the incident at the Severnaya radar site in Siberia. For the exterior views of M's office, the production used the real MI6 headquarters: the SIS Building at 85 Albert Embankment, on the south bank of the Thames beside Vauxhall Bridge. GoldenEye was the first Bond film to feature the building. It was completed in April 1994 and officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 14 July 1994, so it was brand new when the film was made.

Bond's St Petersburg is partly London. In the film's Russian square, his contact Jack Wade fixes a rusty blue Moskovich with a sledgehammer, and that square is the courtyard of Somerset House on the Strand. Some of the St Petersburg scenes were shot in London in this way. The neoclassical complex overlooking the Thames has been redeveloped as a cultural centre since the early 21st century, and in winter its fountain court becomes an ice-skating rink. It also appears in the next film, Tomorrow Never Dies.

Visitor guidance: Somerset House is now an arts and culture centre on the Strand; its fountain court becomes an ice rink in winter.

Bond pursues Ourumov through St Petersburg in a T-55 tank, the film's biggest set piece, which took around six weeks to film. Only part of it was shot on location: reference footage from the city was matched to a massive studio set at Leavesden, where much of the chase was filmed. For the real city, start at Palace Square, the central square of St Petersburg and of the former Russian Empire, framed by the Baroque white-and-turquoise Winter Palace.

Location precision: The film names no street for the location footage; the pin marks Palace Square in the centre of St Petersburg.

The tank chase ends at Janus's armoured train, which Bond derails with the T-55. Once onboard, Bond kills Ourumov while Trevelyan rigs the train to explode. The sequences were filmed on the Nene Valley Railway near Peterborough, where a Class 20 diesel locomotive and two Mark 1 coaches were heavily disguised as a Soviet train. The tunnel the train seems to enter is a small bridge over the tracks, and the crash into the tank was a model effect. The line now runs as a preserved railway.

Location precision: The film is only said to be shot on the line; the pin marks the railway itself, not a confirmed filming spot.

Visitor guidance: The Nene Valley Railway is a preserved line between Peterborough Nene Valley and Yarwell Junction; check its timetable.

In Cuba, Bond and Natalya watch a hidden base with a satellite dish reveal itself as a large artificial lake drains away. The dish scenes, including the fight between Bond and Trevelyan in the antenna cradle, were shot at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico; the lake was a model, since the producers could not find a round one there. The 305 m telescope sat in a natural sinkhole until its support structure fell into the dish on 1 December 2020. The NSF decided in 2022 not to rebuild it.