Italian Job Tour 10
The Miura, the Mafia and the Coach on the Edge
The film opens in the Alps and ends there, famously, with a coach hanging over a precipice. These locations are spread over a wide area of the Valle d'Aosta and the Gran Paradiso, but they can be covered in a day if you keep moving.
You will want satellite navigation and a car you enjoy driving. Some of these spots are genuinely hard to find and there is nothing at the roadside to tell you that you have arrived.
The Alps have their own map and their own run of numbers, 28 to 32.
Alpine locations
Coming from the Italian side, head for the pass; it is well signed from Aosta. You will reach a junction where straight ahead is the tunnel and right, up the hill, is the old road over the pass into Switzerland. Take the road up the hill.
There are a few s-bends to begin with. As soon as the road straightens, pull over on the left and look back at the bridge. That is the opening scene, with the Lamborghini Miura crossing it.
Carry on up the pass and look out for the stretches where the Minis were thrown from the back of the coach β they are on the long s-bends close to the Swiss border β and for the scenes of Beckerman driving before his fatal crash. Look out too for the strange rocks standing up out of the ground, and the hump-backed bridge the coach went over.
Coming the other way, from Switzerland, you cross the border and are almost immediately into the film. Either way, it is a thrilling drive.
Take the autostrada from Aosta towards the Mont Blanc tunnel. It ends at Courmayeur. At the small roundabout, take the last exit, and just after it you will reach a turning on the right.
This is where the team met up and Professor Peach picked his flowers β and where the gang gathered again after the job. "Leave the beer!"
Get back on the main road and turn left, away from Courmayeur, towards La Thuile. You will drive for about fifteen miles before you reach the tunnel.
If you arrive in La Thuile itself, you have just driven through the tunnel Beckerman crashed in. Turn around, come back through it, and stop in the parking lay-by just after the tunnel on the right.
From La Thuile head back towards Aosta, then turn south towards Pondel on the SR47 and drive for about fifteen minutes.
This one is not easy to find, so use the coordinates. It is also not an easy or especially safe place to stop, and my honest advice is that you don't β see it from the car and keep going.
From Turin, head up the airport road and take the turn-off for the Gran Paradiso, then follow the signs all the way to Ceresole Reale. The coach crash was filmed further up the mountain, at the Colle del Nivolet, and the drive up is a thrilling one in its own right.
When you arrive you will really appreciate what a stunt that was. Below you is the road the coach drove along; on the third bend down is where Big William lost it.
It is a stunning place, and the right one to finish on.
That is every location we were able to find and verify, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. You will come away loving the film more than you did before, and knowing Turin rather better than most visitors ever do.
If something has changed on the ground, or you think we have missed a location, I would genuinely like to know β do get in touch.