Permanent Tourist

The Piz Gloria revolving restaurant atop the Schilthorn, high above Mürren and the Lauterbrunnen Valley, is best known for its starring role in the 1969 James Bond film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service“, starring Telly Savalas and George Lazenby. The film company took advantage of the as yet incomplete building to film the relevant sequences at the end of 1968 and used the unique building to stand in for Bond villain Blofeld’s mountain top retreat.

Jo and I visited in 2005 and were unlucky enough to be plagued by one of the regular hindrances of a mountain-top trip: unexpectedly low cloud, which obscured much of the view across the Jungfrau Region to the trio of alpine peaks: Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. We made the best of the trip by enjoying lunch in the revolving restaurant, which takes 55 minutes to complete a 360° circuit and which still features some architectural detail recognizable from the film.