Golf and cinema: Italy's famous film sets

Historic hotels have always been a natural set: terraces, grand staircases, stuccoed salons that cinema used when it could not build new ones. Some of these addresses also have a golf course nearby, and the game has had more ties with cinema than people tend to think. Here are six places where a hotel or a club lays claim to a link with a film or a festival, with a golf course within reach.

Italian film sets and golf courses at a glance

Costa Smeralda: Bond at Cala di Volpe and the 16th hole

In the film The Spy Who Loved Me, from 1977, James Bond and agent Anya stay, according to the hotel, at the Hotel Cala di Volpe; the Sardinian scenes were shot between late August and September 1976. The hotel was designed between 1961 and 1963 by Jacques Couëlle, whom Jacques Prévert called "the anarchitect", as a small stone seaside village.

The link continues on the golf course. The Pevero Golf Club, an 18-hole par-72 by Robert Trent Jones opened in 1972, dedicates its 16th hole to James Bond, in memory of 1962, the year the saga debuted and the Costa Smeralda began. It is the course the hotel recommends to its guests. The club's 2026 rates run from 120 to 180 euros for 18 holes, depending on the season.

Venice: from the Lido to the Film Festival, and the links at Alberoni

The Hotel Excelsior is, according to the hotel, home of the Venice Film Festival since 1932: the first edition opened with a screening of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, followed by a dance on the terrace. The hotel's Sala Stucchi is also the setting of a private dinner in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America. Among its guests, the hotel recalls, were Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, and Lady Diana arrived by water taxi.

The golf springs from the same hotel: in 1928 Henry Ford stepped ashore with his golf bag and asked Count Volpi di Misurata where he could play, and the count had the Alberoni course built. Today the Circolo Golf Venezia is an 18-hole par-72 of 6,039 metres with a links character, housed in an Austrian fort; it has hosted three Italian Opens (1955, 1960, 1974). In 2026 the green fee is 95 euros on weekdays and 110 on weekends and holidays, with a winter rate of 60 euros; the club is closed on Mondays. The hotel estimates about 20 minutes by car.

Rimini: Fellini in suite 315

Whenever he returned to Rimini, Federico Fellini slept, the hotel says, in suite 315 of the Grand Hotel, which as a boy he had spied on through the hedges and which in 1973 he turned into a dream in Amarcord. Today the five-star hotel, dating from 1908, has a museum trail, "L'Albergo dei Sogni", with nine stations, "or eight and a half, Fellini-style, no?", and two cocktails in the director's honour at the bar: the La Dolce Vita and the 8 ½.

For golf, the Rimini Verucchio Golf Club lies in the Valmarecchia: 18 holes par 72 by Brian M. Silva (1995), with a 7-hole executive course. From the 17th and 18th holes the three towers of San Marino can be seen in the distance. The 2026 green fee starts at 57 euros on weekdays; the Grand Hotel offers a package with at least two nights and two green fees.

Rapallo, Asolo and Villa d'Este: three historic sets

In Rapallo, the Excelsior Palace hotel, which opened in 1901 as a Kursaal, states that its terrace appears in Battesimo di Nave (1914), among the first films shot outdoors. The Golf Club Rapallo, in the same town, has been in play since 1929: 18 holes par 70, with the signature hole at the 7th, behind which rises the Romanesque monastery of Valle Christi.

In Asolo, the Villa Cipriani points out that the town and its surroundings appear in Liliana Cavani's Ripley's Game and in I Dreamed of Africa. The nearest course is the Asolo Golf Club, about 12 km away according to the hotel.

At Villa d'Este, in 1925, Alfred Hitchcock shot some scenes of The Pleasure Garden. The Montorfano club, about 14 km away, was designed by Peter Gannon in 1926 and was bought back by the hotel in 2024.

Tirrenia: Hollywood among the pines

A different case: the Cosmopolitan Golf & Country Club in Tirrenia says it stands where the Pisorno studios were in the 1930s, with the motto "from Hollywood to the greens". It has 18 holes par 72 of 6,291 metres from the championship tees, and a clubhouse by Aldo Rossi.

When to go

For the Film Festival, according to the hotel the Lido changes pace in September, when the red carpet is unrolled in front of the Excelsior. For the other sets, the calendar is that of the courses: Golf Rapallo is open all year, except on non-holiday Tuesdays, and the Cosmopolitan is open all year.