The Bourne Identity

On their first night in Paris, Bourne and Marie have nowhere safe to stay, so they sleep in her red Mini parked on this Left Bank quay, across the river from Île Saint-Louis. The island's old stone houses still line the far bank, as in the film.

Access · Public space

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), the agent who has lost his memory, arranges to meet Conklin, the CIA man in charge of the secret Treadstone programme, alone on this bridge. When he sees that Conklin has not come alone, he calls the meeting off. Despite its name, the Pont Neuf ('New Bridge') is the oldest bridge in Paris, finished in 1607.

Access · Public space

A Paris address leads Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), the agent who has lost his memory, and Marie, the young German woman driving him, to an apartment that seems to be his, and there an assassin attacks them. The building used is No. 104 on this broad avenue running down from the Arc de Triomphe. People live there, so look from the street.

Access · Public space

Bourne briefs Marie on a bench outside this Belle Époque palace hotel before she walks in, poses as an assistant and talks the front desk out of 'John Michael Kane's' phone records, while he waits in a phone box in the Tuileries across the road. The gilded Joan of Arc statue and the hotel's corner clock still frame the square exactly as they did in 2002.

Access · Exterior; interior by reservation

Bourne leaves Marie waiting outside the great northern terminus while he stashes his red bag in a left-luggage locker inside. The statue-crowned stone façade on Place Napoléon III looks just as it did in the film, and the station is still the gateway for Eurostar and trains to the north.

Access · Public space

The Treadstone safe house where Nicky runs the Paris operation sits above the Le Marché restaurant on this leafy 18th-century square in the Marais, and near the end of the film Bourne tracks it down. Today it is one of the quietest café squares in the quarter, ringed by terraces under the trees.

Access · Public space

Exiled dictator Wombosi is shot by the Professor in his palatial townhouse. In reality it is the former mansion of Marie-Laure de Noailles, made over by Philippe Starck for Baccarat, with the Eiffel Tower peeking in from the background. The crystal house still occupies it, with a boutique and a Ducasse restaurant inside.

Access · Exterior; interior by reservation

In the last Paris shot Bourne walks away from Treadstone across this footbridge beside the Louvre and simply vanishes into the crowd. The bridge, its slender iron arches and the view along the Seine to Île de la Cité are unchanged.

Access · Public space

Following the lead to 'Alliance Sécurité Maritime', Bourne crosses the windswept esplanade beneath the giant hollow cube of the Grande Arche. The marble arch and the towers around it look much as they did in 2002. The rooftop has been closed to visitors since April 2023, so this is a visit to the esplanade.

Access · Outside only: the esplanade is public; the rooftop is closed

The wildest beat of the Mini chase: Bourne throws Marie's red Mini down these steps and through a passage barely wider than the car, between Rue du Transvaal and Rue des Couronnes on the Belleville hillside. It is still a steep, quiet stairway between garden walls, a good excuse to explore Parc de Belleville next door.

Access · Public space

In the last scene Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), the agent who has lost his memory, finds Marie (Franka Potente), the young German woman who helped him escape across Europe, on a Greek island where she now rents out scooters. It was filmed on Mykonos at Sea Satin Market, the waterfront spot in Little Venice right below the island's windmills.

Access · Public waterfront and hill, free. Little Venice gets very crowded at sunset in summer.

The film opens with Italian fishermen pulling an unconscious, wounded man out of the Mediterranean; when he wakes he has no idea who he is. The boat brings him back to port and he is put ashore at the harbour of Oneglia, one of the two old towns that make up Imperia on the Ligurian coast, easy to spot by its lighthouse and its row of coloured houses.

Access · Public harbour and quays, free.

In 'Zurich' Bourne opens a bank safe-deposit box he did not know he had and finds passports in several names, piles of cash and a gun. The Swiss bank was filmed in Prague at the Petschek Palace, the building used as Gestapo headquarters during World War II, which now houses the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Access · Government office: exterior only, from the street.

Bourne, asleep on a bench in a snowy 'Zurich' park, is woken by two police officers asking for his papers, and he disarms both of them in seconds without knowing how he can do it. The park is really Kampa Park, on Kampa Island in Prague, beside the Vltava just south of Charles Bridge.

Access · Public park, free.

Bourne goes to the American embassy in 'Zurich' to find out who he is, and there he first sees Marie, a young German woman arguing at the counter about her visa. The embassy entrance was filmed in Prague at Panská 7, by the Mucha Museum.

Access · Street exterior, free. The Mucha Museum is ticketed; check opening hours before you go.

Cornered by the guards inside the 'US Embassy', Bourne studies an evacuation map, climbs out and gets away down the outside of the building. That escape was filmed in Prague at the building that is now the Hotel Carlo IV, on Senovážné square near the main railway station.

Access · Working hotel: see it from the square; the interior is for guests and customers.

Bourne's arrival in a snowy 'Zurich' after leaving Italy. It was filmed in Prague on 17. listopadu, the street that runs past the Rudolfinum concert hall and the Museum of Decorative Arts at the edge of the old Jewish quarter. One Prague guide calls the match likely rather than certain.

Access · Public street, free.