Sölden

Where it sits. Sölden lies deep in the Ötztal, the long side valley that runs south from the Inn about 60 kilometres west of Innsbruck, in the Tyrolean Alps. The village sits at 1,368 metres on the floor of the valley, hemmed in by the Ötztal Alps, and the municipality is one of the largest in Austria by area, covering roughly 467 square kilometres, most of which is rock, ice and high pasture. Two glaciers, the Rettenbachferner and the Tiefenbachferner, hang above the village at the head of a side valley, reached by the Ötztal Glacier Road, which tops out around 2,830 metres and is the highest paved road in the country. The population is about 3,300; the bed count is many times that.

The story behind it. Sölden was a farming and hunting settlement until cable cars arrived in the second half of the twentieth century, and it grew fast on a combination of glacier skiing and a nightlife reputation that sets it apart from the quieter Tyrolean resorts. The ski area is built around three peaks over 3,000 metres, marketed as the Big 3: the Gaislachkogl at 3,058 metres, the Tiefenbachkogl at 3,250 and the Schwarze Schneid at 3,340, each with a viewing platform. Because the glaciers hold snow early, Sölden opens in autumn and has hosted the opening races of the Alpine Ski World Cup on the Rettenbach glacier in late October since 1993, on a slope steep enough that the giant slalom there is regarded as one of the hardest on the circuit. The Wildspitze, at 3,768 metres the highest mountain in Tyrol, stands in the same range to the west.

On screen. Sölden supplies the Austrian act of Spectre (2015). The Hoffler Klinik, the alpine sanatorium where Bond finds Madeleine Swann and where Mr White dies, is the ice Q restaurant on the summit of the Gaislachkogl — a stack of offset glass cubes designed by the Tyrolean architect Johann Obermoser and opened in 2013, sitting at 3,048 metres directly above the cable-car station. Sam Mendes shot here in January 2015 with a unit of several hundred, and the building appears essentially undisguised: the cantilevered glazing, the terrace and the approach from the gondola are all real, while the clinic interiors were largely built at Pinewood. The film's aircraft-versus-car chase, in which Bond takes a Britten-Norman Islander apart against a mountainside while pursuing Range Rover Sport SVRs, was shot partly here and partly at Obertilliach in East Tyrol and around Altaussee in Styria. In July 2018 the resort opened 007 Elements, a cinematic installation of around 1,300 square metres dug into the mountain beside ice Q, designed by Obermoser with the Bond art director Neal Callow, with galleries on the title sequences, the vehicles, the score and the digital effects.

What you actually see today. The Gaislachkoglbahn runs in two stages from the village to 3,058 metres, with the second stage's cabins built to a design that matched the resort's rebranding around the film; the ride takes under half an hour in total and is open in both winter and summer. At the top you have ice Q, 007 Elements and a panorama across the Ötztal Alps to the Wildspitze and, on clear days, south into Italy. The ski area itself runs to roughly 144 kilometres of pistes and 33 lifts, with the glaciers linked to the main mountain by a connecting gondola. In summer the same lifts serve high-level walking, and the E5 long-distance route from Oberstdorf to Meran passes through the valley on its way over the Similaun and Timmelsjoch. Hochsölden, a small satellite at 2,090 metres, sits above the village on the sunny flank. Down in the valley, Sölden itself is a working resort rather than a picture-postcard one: a long ribbon of hotels, apartment blocks and bars either side of the Ötztaler Ache, with the Gaislachkoglbahn at the southern end and the Giggijochbahn at the northern. Anyone expecting an unaltered Tyrolean village should look instead at Vent or Obergurgl further up the valley, both of which are within half an hour by road.

Getting there and timing. The nearest railway station is Ötztal Bahnhof on the Innsbruck–Bregenz main line, from which regional buses run the 45 kilometres up the valley in about an hour. Innsbruck airport is roughly 90 minutes away by road, Munich about three hours. The winter season is long by Alpine standards, from the glacier opening in September or October through to early May on the high ground. Late January and February give the most reliable snow and the coldest, clearest air; the World Cup weekend in late October fills every bed in the valley. Summer visitors get lift-served hiking from late June to late September, when the Glacier Road is clear. Note that the whole valley funnels traffic onto one road, and Saturday changeover days in high season are slow.