Daniel Craig and Monica Bellucci Hit Rome for 'SPECTRE'

James Bond is our most elegant action hero, and it looks like Monica Bellucci will fit right into 007’s world. At a photo call in Rome on Wednesday, Bellucci posed alongside her SPECTRE co-star Daniel Craig, who plays the swanky secret agent for the fourth time in Sam Mendes’s upcoming film. Bellucci plays Bond’s love interest Lucia Sciarra and looked stunning in a curve-hugging, knee-length red dress and natural make-up, while Craig wore an impeccably tailored pinstripe suit. The actors posed for photographers on Rome’s Capitol Hill, where they met with mayor Ignazio Marino in anticipation of their upcoming film shoot.

The sun-drenched Italian cityscape is quite a contrast to Spectre’s most recent location in the Austrian Alps. Photos from January showed Craig wearing a down parka as he braved the snow with co-stars Dave Bautista (playing villain Mr. Hinx) and Léa Seydoux (playing one of the film’s several Bond girls). The Austria shoot has proven hazardous as well as cold: a second unit assistant director was seriously injured this week when a camera truck veered off the road and crashed into a barn. Craig also suffered a minor injury this month, spraining a knee while shooting a fight scene at London’s Pinewood Studios.

The Italy shoot, which begins on March 8, promises to be less icy than Austria but similarly intense. According to Italian website Bad Taste (via ComingSoon.net), the SPECTRE scenes filmed in Rome will include a “spectacular car chase” on the ancient road Via Nomentana, and a sequence on the waterfront that involves Bond’s car plummeting into the Tiber. Later on, filming will move to Mexico, where MI6 reports that SPECTRE will re-create the Day of the Dead festival.

SPECTRE, the 24th film in the James Bond franchise, finds the British spy investigating the shadowy criminal organization of the title, which has mysterious ties to his past. The name SPECTRE should also ring a bell for film buffs, given that the terrorist group was a primary antagonist to Sean Connery’s Bond in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. (The original octopus logo even makes a sneaky appearance on the minimalist new Spectre poster.) Mendes has said that the new film, like Skyfall, will “acknowledge the history” of the franchise “in a kind of sly, mischievous way.” Christoph Waltz is rumored to be playing a new incarnation of Bond’s iconic cat-stroking villain Blofeld, and the Alps shoot suggests a throwback to snowbound action sequences like those in the Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and For Your Eyes Only. Along with its retro elements, Spectre offers a (somewhat) progressive twist on the Bond girl: At 50 years old, Bellucci is the oldest actress ever to carry the title. SPECTRE will open in theaters on Nov. 6.

Watch the first video from the set below:

Image credit: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images