Skyfall: From Istanbul to the Highlands

The film opens in Istanbul, where Bond chases the mercenary Patrice, who has stolen a list of undercover agents, through the market crowds of Eminönü and then by motorbike across the domed roofs of the Grand Bazaar. Parts of the old city, including the Spice Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar, were closed for filming in April 2012; shopkeepers were paid compensation for the lost trade. To protect the historic roofs, the crew removed sections and replaced them with temporary replicas for the bikes to ride on.

Visitor guidance: The Grand Bazaar is open daily except Sundays; Eminönü and the Spice Bazaar are a short walk downhill.

The chase ends in a fistfight on top of a moving train. M orders Eve to take a shot she isn't sure of, the bullet hits Bond, and he falls from a high railway bridge into the river below. The bridge is the Varda Viaduct near the village of Kıralan, north of Adana, built by German engineers in 1912 for the Berlin–Baghdad railway. Bond's stunt double dived backwards off the 300-foot (91 m) drop held by a safety line from a crane on the train.

Visitor guidance: A viewpoint on the Kıralan village road looks across the viaduct; passenger trains still cross it.

Officially dead, Bond lies low on a Mediterranean beach, drinking too much and playing a drinking game with a scorpion on his hand — until he sees news of an attack on MI6 and decides to go home. The beach is Çalış, on the edge of the resort town of Fethiye in south-west Turkey. The production had to negotiate with 613 part-owners of the beach to film along the shore, and the shack bar was built for the film and taken down straight afterwards.

Location precision: The bar's exact spot on the long beach isn't documented; the pin marks Çalış Beach.

Driving back over Vauxhall Bridge, M watches her own office explode inside MI6 headquarters — the work of a hacker who has broken into the service's systems. The building is the real home of the Secret Intelligence Service, the green-and-cream SIS Building on the Albert Embankment, already blown up once before in The World Is Not Enough. Vauxhall Bridge and Millbank were closed for the shoot, but this time the explosion itself was added digitally in post-production rather than staged on a replica.

Visitor guidance: The building is closed to the public; the classic view is from Vauxhall Bridge or the north bank of the Thames.

Back in service, Bond sits on a bench in Room 34 of the National Gallery and meets his new quartermaster: Q turns out to be a young man with a laptop. They sit in front of J. M. W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, which shows a veteran warship of Trafalgar being towed away to be broken up — a pointed choice for a film about whether old agents are still of any use. The scene was shot at night, while the gallery was closed.

Visitor guidance: The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square is free to enter; check which room holds the Turner before you go.

A trail through Shanghai and a Macau casino leads Bond to the island lair of Raoul Silva, the ex-agent behind the attacks: a deserted city of crumbling concrete. In the film the island lies off Macau, but its look came from Hashima, or "Battleship Island", off Nagasaki — a coal-mining island crammed with apartment blocks, inhabited from 1887 until the mine closed in 1974. Exterior shots of the real island were used; the streets the actors walk were built at Pinewood Studios.

Visitor guidance: Tours from Nagasaki land on a short visitor walkway; most of the island is off-limits, and rough seas often prevent landing.

Captured and brought to London, Silva escapes and disappears into the Underground, with Bond in pursuit through tunnels, onto platforms and onto the back of a moving train. Almost the whole sequence was shot at Charing Cross station, on the Jubilee line platforms that closed in 1999 when the line was extended to Docklands; they played both "Temple" and "Embankment". The train that crashes through the tunnel roof belongs to a different place entirely: the 007 Stage at Pinewood.

Visitor guidance: The disused platforms are closed to the public except on occasional London Transport Museum Hidden London tours.

To draw Silva out, Bond takes M in his old Aston Martin to Skyfall, his childhood home in the Highlands. They stop by the road with Buachaille Etive Mòr rising behind them, at the head of Glen Etive near Glen Coe. The house itself, and the chapel where the final scene plays out, were never in Scotland: they were a full-scale set of plywood and plaster built on Hankley Common, Ministry of Defence land in Surrey. The finale had first been planned for Duntrune Castle in Argyll.

Location precision: The exact roadside spot isn't documented; the pin marks the Glen Etive road below Buachaille Etive Mòr.

Visitor guidance: The single-track Glen Etive road leaves the A82 east of Glencoe village; use the passing places and drive slowly.