<P> The song debuted on the UK Singles Chart on November 17, 1984 at number 51, and peaked at number three on January 12, 1985; it spent a total of 18 weeks in the chart, and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for shipment of 500,000 copies across United Kingdom . According to Official Charts Company, the song has sold 892,000 copies there as of August 2018 . Across Europe, the song peaked within the top - ten of the charts of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland . According to Music & Media magazine the song had sold around 1.5 million copies in Europe by September 1985 . </P> <P> "Like a Virgin" became Madonna's first number - one song on the Australian Kent Music Report chart and on the Japanese International Singles Chart . It peaked at number - two on the New Zealand Singles Chart, number 15 on the Swedish charts and peaked the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles . </P> <P> The music video, directed by Mary Lambert, who worked with Madonna in her video for "Borderline", was shot in Venice and partly in New York City in July 1984 . Madonna was portrayed as a knowing virgin, a figment of the pornographic mind, as she walked through marble rooms, wearing a wedding gown . It alternated with scenes of a provocative - looking Madonna on board a gondola . She commented, "(Mary) wanted me to be the modern - day, worldly-wise girl that I am . But then we wanted to go back in time and use myself as an actual virgin ." The video starts with Madonna boarding on a boat from the Brooklyn Bridge and travels to Venice . As she steps down into the city, she moves like a stripper and undulated sinuously . She wears a black dress and blue pants with a number of Christian symbol embedded jewelry around her neck . She sings the song at full volume as she watches a lion walking between the columns of the Piazza San Marco of Venice and along the statute of Saint Mark . </P> <P> A number of game - playing involving carnival masks, men, lions, werelions are portrayed with allusions to eighteenth - century practices and Saint Mark . Sheila Whiteley, author of Women and popular music: sexuality, identity, and subjectivity, felt that Madonna's image signified a denial of sexual knowledge, but also portrayed her in simulated writhing on a gondola, thus underpinning the simulation of deceit . The intrusion of a male lion, confirmed the underlying bestial discourse of both mythological fairy tale and pornographic sex . Whiteley observed that in the video, Madonna's lover wears the lion's mask and while cavorting with him, Madonna sheds the veneer of innocence and shows her propensity for wild animal passions . Having instilled desire, metaphorically she turns her lover into a Beast . Madonna commented about shooting with the lion: </P>

Where in venice was like a virgin filmed
find me the text answering this question