If you’ve recently seen the latest James Bond film, No Time To Die, and you’ve fallen in love with the place Madeleine and James go to in Italy to visit Vesper’s grave then you might want to know where it is. Remembering where Vesper Lynd died won’t help you though, because that scene took place in Venice in the North of Italy, which is a long way away from where she’s buried.
It kind of begs the question why her grave is so far away from where James and Vesper ran away to at the end of Casino Royale, but maybe it’s to do with her family home, or something along those line. Whatever the answer, the location in No Time To Die is genuinely stunning and the city is bound to get a boost in visitor numbers as a result of the feature in the film.
AdvertisementThe closest airport is Bari if you’re looking to jet off on a 00 holiday.
Where is Vesper Lynd’s grave?
James Bond visits the final resting place of Vesper at her grave on the outskirts of Matera. Located in Southern Italy, just on the arch at the bottom, close to the heel, it’s the capital city of the province of Matera and it sits next to the Gravina River.
It’s known for it’s caves and stunning vista as it rises out of the valley of the river. The old abandoned stones from the underground dwellings and churches are now named as a UNESCO World Heritage site, but they don’t feature in No Time To Die. Instead, it focuses on the sprawling network of cobbled streets, stairways and bridges with Bond’s epic chase scenes throughout the city after he visits the grave site.
AdvertisementJames and Madeleine start their stay in the ancient Italian city with a stop off at a stunning hotel and with the popularity of the city for tourism, there are plenty to choose from in real life. However, things go down hill for them from there as James gets blown up at the location where Vesper is buried. The good news is that Blofeld is pretty rubbish and fails once again to make much of a dent in the 00 agent.
He then has to race back into the city from the grave on the outskirts of town, but gets intercepted along the way by the latest crop of SPECTRE gits. The henchmen are led by the Mad-Eye Moody character called Primo, who is played by Dali Benssalah, and the chase goes into overdrive once Bond and Swann get into the Aston Martin DB5, which gets pummeled by bullets before James finally unleashes the gatling gun headlights.
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What about the city’s fire secrets festival
AdvertisementNo Time To Die makes a lot of the Italian city having an annual festival of renewal where secrets are set on fire to bury them in the past. It looks pretty cool as James and Madeleine arrive in Matera and it leads up to the moment where she sets fire to her own, “homme masque”, where she tries to move on from her tough childhood.
Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a festival like it in real life, so if you are planning on a visit to the South of Italy sometime soon then you don’t need to worry about fitting this in. However, you could try to catch the Madonna Della Bruna festival on the second day of July if you want to sample the local traditions of the city.
Where else might you have seen Matera?
If you think that the city seems familiar, but you can’t quite place it, you’ve probably seen it in on of the other big films that it has been a part of. In addition to No Time To Die, it has also featured in Wonder Woman where it was used as a double for Themyscira in some of the opening scenes with Diana on the Island.
It was also used to add biblical impact to the 2016 remake of Ben Hur, along with a host of Italian films, like Roberto Rossellini’s Garibaldi. With the impact it has in Bond 25, we’ll be surprised if it doesn’t get even more big screen attention over the coming decades, and we’ll add them to the list as they come out. Hopefully, by then we will have bagged a DB5 for trip to the city and the rest of Southern Italy, but without the SPECTRE gits hassling us the entire way.
In the meantime, you can check out our movie news section to keep tabs on the latest upcoming films, or visit the Bond movie website at https://www.007.com/.
