The Bourne Supremacy | 2004

Locations for the first sequel to Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity move from Goa, India, to Europe, where – though locations flit between Germany, Italy, Russia and the Netherlands, most of the movie was, in fact, filmed in Berlin.

Since the end of The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) and Marie (Franka Potente) have dropped off the grid, and are lying low in Goa. This long-time hippie beach paradise on the west coast of India still carries signs of its many years under Portuguese rule.

Bourne’s hideaway is on the isolated white sand Palolem Beach, about 3km from Canacona railway junction in southern Goa.

The market town, though, is not so close as it appears. It’s the Goan capital, Panaji (previously Panjim), way to the north of Goa, where hired killer Kirill (Karl Urban) tries to trace Bourne at the ‘telegraph office’: the Communidade Building on Church Square. He chases Bourne’s Suzuki Gypsy through the old Fontainhas Heritage Precinct and Candolim, before it plunges off the Nerul Bridge into the River Nerul.

Moving on to Europe, the deal set up to flush out a CIA mole, sabotaged by Kirill to frame Jason Bourne, takes place at Kantstrasse/Hardenbergstrasse, alongside Zoologischer Garten Station in the centre of Berlin.

The hotel in which Kirill reports to his control, Yuri, is Motel Avus, Halenseestrasse 51, Halensee, at the end of the site of the famous Avus racetrack, directly opposite the ICC, the International Congress Centre, another location for the film.

As Bourne himself returns to Europe, there’s the briefest glimpse of the real Naples Harbour (courtesy of a seaborne second unit), but the ‘Stazione Marittima di Napoli’, the Italian customs office at which Bourne is held, is the Eingangsbereich Nord building of Messe Berlin, the northern entrance to the Berlin Exhibition Grounds, Messedamm 22.

Likewise, although there’s an establishing shot of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport as Kirill arrives in Russia, his meeting with Yuri was filmed in the parking area beneath Berlin's ICC, part of the same complex as the ‘Naples customs office’.

When Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) travels to ‘Amsterdam’ to find Nicky (Julia Stiles), it’s in Berlin – on Walter-Benjamin-Platz – that he contacts her. And the flight back to Berlin’s Templehof Airport must be the shortest on film, since it also begins at Templehof, standing in for ‘Amsterdam’. Tempelhof closed down in 2008, and the area used as a public park.

By now it should come as no surprise that the ‘Munich’ house of Jarda, the other remaining Treadstone operative, is also Berlin, it's 35 Kaiserstrasse, in the Wannsee district.

Bourne arrives in Berlin at Ostbahnhof, one of east Berlin’s two major termini, and takes a cab into the city, crossing the elaborately turretted Oberbaum Bridge (a quick homage to Run, Lola, Run, which starred Franka Potente). The bridge pops up again as Bourne tracks down techie Christian Dassault in 2016's Jason Bourne.

He tracks US agent Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) to the Westin Grand, Friedrichstrasse 158-164, at Behrenstrasse, and tails her to the CIA hub.

It's back at the luxury hotel that Landy finally confronts Ward Abbott.

The CIA hub was an empty office block at 32 Karl-Liebknecht Allee. It's since been demolished and the H2 Hotel Berlin Alexanderplatz now stands on the site.

Setting up a meeting with Nicky under the World Clock (Weltzeituhr) in Alexanderplatz, Bourne takes evasive action amid a student demo.

Don’t make plans quite yet to check in to the ‘Hotel Brecker, Kurfurstendamm 288’, where Bourne begins to remember his disastrous first mission – to kill Russian politician Neski. Although there’s no such hotel, there are plans to turn the location used, Haus Cumberland, Kurfurstendamm 193, into a luxury hotel (some time in 2010).

As the police arrive, Bourne makes his escape on foot. The police motorbike crashes into a taxi on Kantstrasse. Bourne depends on the precision of the Berlin railway system to make his escape on S-Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse (try that trick in London)...

...before making a getaway by leaping onto a boat from the Friedrichstrasse Bridge over the Spree.

Bourne takes the train to Moscow, arriving at Moscow Kievskiai rail station (the real thing, which serves the Ukraine), but the ‘Moscow’ disco, where Yuri finds Kirill to inform him that Bourne is still alive, is the, now closed, Cafe Moskau, Karl Marx Allee 34 (part of the Kino International complex) in, yes, Berlin.

The ‘Moscow’ street where Bourne looks for Neski’s daughter is Scharrenstrasse, south of Alexanderplatz in Spittelmarkt. The police arrive on Friedrichsgracht, and Kirill is temporarily arrested on Spittelmarkt at Leipziger Strasse.

Part of the subsequent car chase is indeed Moscow, but much was still Berlin, in the suburb of Potsdam, and on Karl Marx Allee, which was covered in snow. The final crash is at the Potsdamer Platz exit to Berlin’s Tiergarten Tunnel.

Bourne finally turns up in New York, where he phones Landy before disappearing into the crowds at 3rd Avenue and 48th Street.

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