A museum dedicated to James Bond is set to open next month in an appropriately daring setting. Set on a mountain peak in the Austrian alps, the 007 Elements museum will tower nearly 33,000 feet above sea level on Gaislachkogl mountain in Sölden, and is accessible via the Gaislachkoglbahn cable car.
The new museum is situated next to the Ice Q restaurant, which appeared in the 2015 Bond film Spectre as a medical clinic and during a snow chase scene. When complete, the 14,000-square-foot building, designed by architect Johann Obermoser, will offer spectacular views of the Tyrolean valleys.
The exterior of the 007 Elements museum. Photo by Christoph Nosig.
“It’s an authentic James Bond movie location inside the top of a mountain at 3,000 meters up in the air,” the project’s creative director and the art director of the past four Bond movies, Neal Callow, told CNN Travel. He added that the location was close to Bond creator Ian Fleming’s heart. “Lots of [Fleming’s] early life experiences took place in the Austrian alps. So when he was writing these Bond books, on several occasions he put James Bond into those places that he knew from his own personal memory,” Callow said.
The museum will present a number of “immersive, interactive and educational” exhibitions that reveal how the movies are made. While the installations will primarily focus on Spectre, which was filmed nearby, it will also feature exhibits on each of the other 24 Bond films.
007 Elements Interior, screening room. Photo by Kristopher Grunert.
“Our aim with 007 Elements is to tell the story of the making of 007 films in an ultra-modern, emotive, and engaging way,” Callow said in a statement. “We want to use this incredible location to place our guests into Bond’s environment, and bring the stories to life in a unique and unforgettable way.”
The museum aims to emphasize interactivity and therefore won’t feature posters, photos, or scripts. It is, however, slated to show some of the franchise’s most famous props, including Bond’s Range Rover and the full-sized airplane from Spectre, for which the museum’s architects designed a giant hatch in the roof.