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Anthony
Minghella's visually beguiling adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's
WWII romance is set in Italy and Egypt, but the dazzling desertscapes
are, in fact, Tunisia.
The
desert camp of Count Laszlo de Almásy (Ralph
Fiennes) is in the Tunisian Sahara a few miles from the oasis
of Nefta. The site is beneath the bizarre Onk Jemal,
the Camel's Neck rock formation, not too far from the sets
for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom
Menace. A guided desert safari, with a four-wheel drive
vehicle is the most practical way to see the location.
The
old 'Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo' – the wartime watering
hole for explorers, diplomats and spies which was destroyed in
the fifties – is not Egypt either. Nor is it Tunisia.
It’s the Grand Hotel des Bains in Venice,,
made famous by Luchino Visconti's
Death In Venice.
The
actual Italian locations include the village, which is Pienza
in Tuscany, and the chapel where Binoche
studies the frescoes.
This
is the 13th century Bacci Chapel in the Church of San
Francesco at Arezzo, also in Tuscany. The frescoes,
painted between 1453 and 1466 by Piero Della Francesca, have recently
been restored. Reservations are required to view them, and, no,
you can’t light flares or dangle from the ceiling.
The English Patient, (1996, dir: Anthony
Minghella)
Ralph Fiennes, Kristin
Scott-Thomas, Juliette
Binoche, Willem Dafoe,
Colin Firth, Naveen
Andrews
*
Check out the Tunisia
travel feature.
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