Piz Gloria

Piz Gloria is a revolving restaurant and viewing complex located at the summit of the Schilthorn above Mürren in the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland. Standing at an altitude of 2,970 metres, the building offers panoramic views across the Swiss Alps, including the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. The restaurant was still under construction when it was selected as a filming location in 1968, and the James Bond production helped finance and accelerate its completion while also adding features required for filming, including a helipad. The building opened in 1969 and retained Piz Gloria, the name of the fictional mountaintop retreat in Ian Fleming’s novel and its film adaptation.

Piz Gloria has appeared in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). The summit building provides the exterior and several interior areas of Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s remote research institute and headquarters.

In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), James Bond travels to Piz Gloria disguised as genealogist Sir Hilary Bray to investigate Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s claim to the title of Comte de Bleuchamp. Bond arrives at the isolated mountaintop institute and discovers that Blofeld is treating a group of young women for allergies while secretly hypnotising them to distribute biological agents around the world. The real summit building is used for Piz Gloria’s exterior, reception area, Alpine Room, stairways and other public spaces. Bond is eventually exposed and imprisoned, but escapes from the complex and flees down the mountain on skis while pursued by Blofeld’s men.

Piz Gloria returns during the film’s large final assault, when Bond and Marc-Ange Draco lead a helicopter attack on Blofeld’s headquarters to rescue Tracy and stop the biological-warfare plan. Draco’s men land around the summit and fight Blofeld’s guards throughout the complex before explosives destroy the institute. The real building and surrounding mountain provide the visual setting for the attack, while parts of the destruction were created using studio work and effects. Several private interiors, including Bond’s room, Blofeld’s office, the laboratory and the cable-car machinery room, were constructed separately at Pinewood Studios.

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