The insane real-life villa that hosts the ‘Glass Onion’ mystery
Suddenly, out of the fog of bombastic Marvel superhero flicks, murder mystery movies are back in fashion, with Netflix’s Glass Onion leading the charge. Although they were all the rage back in the mid-20th century, with filmmakers like Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski each taking their hand to the genre, as movies entered a wild realm of action blockbusters, demand for the quaint whodunnit fell out of favour.
The Rian Johnson film Knives Out, released in 2019, can be attributed to the genre’s contemporary revival, with the slick Hollywood movie helping to dust the cobwebs of the stiff form of storytelling. Still, whilst the original film was a critical hit, its recent sequel, Glass Onion, managed to grip tightly onto the cultural zeitgeist, becoming the most important movie of Christmas 2022.
One of the most magnetising aspects of the fabulously-shot movie is the titular ‘Glass Onion’ mansion that hosts the wicked murder mystery. Owned by the billionaire Miles Bron in the movie, played with gusto by Edward Norton, the mansion is situated on the fictional private Pisceshite Island and comes complete with a dock that rises from the water, as well as a giant glass dome that stands on the roof of an impressive sun-soaked villa.
Bursting the bubble of fantasy, it is with great regret to inform you that the Glass Onion villa of Pisceshite is as fake as the island it’s situated on, with the house actually being CGI’d into the landscape at Korakia Beach, Greece. In fact, the beach itself isn’t even situated on an island, with the location instead being in the eastern section of the Peloponnese peninsula, close to the picturesque village of Porto Cheli.
It is not far from Cheli that Rian Johnson and his production crew travelled to recreate the titular Glass Onion villa, with Bron’s futuristic palace being largely filmed at Villa 20 in Amanzoe Resort Porto Heli. With six pools, a spa, and panoramic views of the Aegean Sea, among other luxuries, the real-life opulent villa can be rented out by wealthy guests in real life, with the cost of renting out the entire pad likely to be astronomical.
If the various pools and steam rooms weren’t enough to whet your appetite, the staggering central staircase reveals multiple studio bedrooms for 18 guests that are each fitted with private balconies. In addition, the listing boasts: “a multitude of dining spaces, including two outside barbecue areas and a typical Greek taverna under the olive trees,” whilst architects Ed Tuttle and Marios Angelopoulos thoughtfully installed a number of apposite sculptures.
Whilst much of the interior of the villa was used for Glass Onion, sequences involving the innards of the grand transparent sculpture and the main hall of the building were captured on a set at studios in Belgrade, Serbia. Spending seven weeks on the Serbian set and four weeks in Greece, much of the film was shot during the Coronavirus pandemic, meaning that the actors were predominantly restricted from travelling too far from the set.
As Daniel Craig told reporters at the film’s premiere at the 2022 London Film Festival: “We were under lockdown, so we were kind of restricted in our movements so we couldn’t really go very many places… it was about 150 degrees in the shade, but, you know, those are high-class problems”.
No doubt, demand has already skyrocketed for the Greek villa depicted in the new Netflix murder mystery flick, with the site magnetising the very social influencers who played pawns in Rian Johnson’s movie.
