Rome city guideRome holidaysRome correspondent John Hooper selects 10 of his favourite films based in the city, from Hepburn in Roman Holiday to Federico Fellini's iconic La Dolce VitaAs featured in our Rome city guide
Roman Holiday, William Wyler, 1953
Insulated from the commotion of Roman life, Via Margutta is a cobbled street near the Spanish Steps, draped in ivy and lined nowadays with art galleries, restaurants and boutiques. It was home to Federico Fellini and Truman Capote. And at number 51, Crown Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) began her fleeting love affair with an American foreign correspondent, Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) in the enchanting, if improbable, comedy that shot Hepburn to fame and forever welded Vespas to Rome in the popular imagination. "You have my permission to withdraw..." slurs Hepburn, unaware she has previously been sedated, as she lets her skirt slip to the floor. "Why, thank you very much," replies the gentlemanly Peck and leaves her to sleep alone. It is not only the face of Rome that has changed since.
Via Margutta
Roma, Federico Fellini, 1972
"The world must follow the church and not vice-versa," whispers an onlooker at Fellini's fantastical Vatican fashion show. Among those who take to the catwalk are roller-skating prelates in red, satin robes and severe-looking nuns wearing headdresses with giant wings. There are neon-flashing mitres and bicycling curates. The tableau, set to Nino Rota's often eerie organ music, is juxtaposed to a later scene in which the parade is of loud-mouthed, bare-breasted prostitutes in a wartime brothel daring the men to pick them for the night. Fellini's movie is effectively plotless, but the power of its images and the peculiarity of the scenes he offers make it compulsively watchable.
The Vatican
L'Eclisse, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962
The sterile backdrop for Antonioni's L'Eclisse is the EUR. The Esposizione Universale Roma it is where Mussolini planned to hold an international celebration of 20 years of fascism – plans thwarted by the second world war. Its classically-inspired architecture and broad streets offer a vision of how Rome might have developed had the Fascists remained in power. Antonioni's heroine Vittoria (Monica Vitti) arranges to meet her lover, the young stockbroker Piero (Alain Delon), at sunset by a building site in EUR. In the final scene, the streets are empty and hauntingly silent. A man steps from a bus reading a newspaper with the headline "Peace is Weak". As the sun goes down, neither lover has arrived.
EUR
The Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica, 1948
Vittorio De Sica's Neo-realist masterpiece follows unemployed Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) and his young son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) as they hunt for his stolen bicycle in a depressed, post-war Rome. In line with the canons of neo-realism, De Sica shot only on location and employed solely non-professional actors (Maggiorani had been a factory worker). Award-winning and hugely influential, the film was made on a budget of just $133,000. The search takes viewers from the desolate outskirts of the city to the bicycle market which still exists at Porta Portese. It is here that the disconcertingly stern Bruno trips and falls in the pouring rain, unheeded by his father, who is obsessed by the search for his precious – and finally elusive - bicycle.
Porta Portese
Three Coins in the Fountain, Jean Negulesco, 1954
Cheesy film, maybe, but the reason for a great song. Every day, an estimated total of €3,000 in coins are tossed over shoulders towards the sea god Neptune as he stands, flanked by tritons, dominating the giant, action-packed Trevi Fountain. Legend would have it that, by throwing a coin into Rome's most extravagant Baroque structure, visitors are assured of returning to the city. In Jean Negulesco's film, three American girls hungry for romance each throw in a coin while making a wish. Frank Sinatra sang the film's honeyed soundtrack which has since been endlessly reinterpreted in jazz and other versions: "Three hearts in a fountain / Each heart longing for its home / There they lie in the fountain / Somewhere in the heart of Rome."
The Trevi Fountain
The Talented Mr Ripley, Antony Minghella, 1999
With his steady gaze and a smile that lingers just a little too long, Matt Damon gives one of his most critically acclaimed performances in the title role of Minghella's multi-Oscar winning psychological thriller. Born without a silver spoon, the talented but amoral Tom Ripley works his way into the confidence of Dickie (Jude Law) and Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), a glamorous and wealthy couple for whom the Mediterranean is a playground. After killing Dickie, Tom impersonates him. He introduces himself to the wealthy heiress Meredith (Cate Blanchett), and later bumps into her. It is as they are walking through the Piazza Navona that he utters one of the movie's pivotal lines: "I've never been happier. I feel like I've been handed a new life."
Piazza Navona
La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini, 1960
Fellini said that "Censorship is advertising paid by the government". His crowning work was not, thankfully, censored. But La Dolce Vita certainly received plenty of free publicity from the Catholic church's demands that it be banned. So too did the then-fashionable and up-market Via Veneto. Its frivolous cafe society was the milieu from which Fellini's journalist anti-hero, Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) made his living. The Via Veneto was also the workplace of Marcello's sidekick, Paparazzo. His name has stuck ever since to photographers who snap celebrities at their most vulnerable (or revealing). The Via Veneto remains one of Rome's most expensive streets, but is no longer considered fashionable by anyone but rich American and Russian tourists.
Via Veneto
The Belly of an Architect, Peter Greenaway, 1987
"Are you a modern architect Mr Kracklite?", the hero of Greenaway's visual feast is asked. "No more modern than I should be," comes the reply. The Belly of an Architect divides opinion like few other movies. But none has celebrated Rome's architecture with greater relish. The opening dinner party scene is set in Piazza della Rotonda. The Pantheon, the most majestic and best-preserved of Rome's ancient temples, frames the guests as the ambitious Kracklite, aligned in the centre of the shot, announces his latest project. The guests toast and cheer. But on the table is a cake in the shape of a dome where a pound note burns among the candles: a symbol of Kracklite's impending decline in the city of immortal architecture?
Piazza della Rotonda and the Pantheon
Accattone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1961
Ask any young Italian today where the trendiest part of Rome is, and they will tell you it's Pigneto. It is to Rome what Dalston currently is to London. And, long before it became fashionable, the Bar Necci in Pigneto was where the idle pimp Accatone hung out with his demi-mondaine friends in Pasolini's first and arguably grimmest film. Opened in 1924, the bar was burnt down in 2009 only to be completely rebuilt in a few weeks. For anyone familiar with the world-weary cynicism of the Italian capital, one of Accattone's more memorable moments is when its eponymous hero meets Stella, the naive peasant girl he turns into a whore. "You seem so nice, so young, so good and kind," he says. "I don't know how to put this. Are you from Rome?"
Pigneto, Via Fanfulla da Lodi, Bar Necci
Habemus Papum, 2011, Nanni Moretti
When a French cardinal refuses to accept his election as pope, it is decided that the answer is to take him to see a psychiatrist. The confused, but still astute cardinal Melville (Michel Piccoli) seizes the opportunity to escape into the ordinary life of Rome. Via Cola di Rienzo is a high street just north of the Vatican that is almost unknown to tourists, but much frequented by Romans from the historic centre and the surrounding Prati district. It is there that Moretti's confused prelate, unrecognised as the pope-elect, is reminded of a commonplace humanity that is so often missing from his church's deeply pessimistic vision of the contemporary world.
Via Cola di Rienzo
Additional research: Hannah Murphy
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKyilsOmuI5rZ2ppX5%2FCrXuQbGatp6BifnF5xaKjpqtdp7yusQ%3D%3D