Cinecittà, Rome's Film Studio

Every year 100,000 people visit Cinecittà, a large film studio in Rome. With new investments and technologies these historic studios can become again the most important in Europe. The following was adapted from an article in The Economist.

Can Cinecittà become Europe’s premier film hub?

Italy is planning a new golden age for Rome’s historic studio

Filmmakers and actors such as Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Ettore Scola, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Mel Gibson, Anna Magnani, Alberto Sordi, Vittorio De Sica, Clint Eastwood, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Marlon Brando, Kirk Douglas, Audrey Hepburn, Claudia Cardinale and Pier Paolo Pasolini have worked at Cinecittà. More than 3,000 movies have been filmed there, of which 90 received an Academy Award nomination and 47 of these won it. In the 1950s, the number of international productions being made there led to Rome being dubbed "Hollywood on the Tiber."

Tourists can visit the sets of classic films

When you arrive at Cinecittà, you pass through a gatehouse built in the rationalist style popular in Italy in the early 20th century. It seems to prepare you for a journey into the past. That is what the vast majority of visitors—around 100,000 a year—come for. Cinecittà, spread over more than 40 hectares on the outskirts of Rome, hosts the Italian Museum of Moving Images, which includes a permanent exhibition on the illustrious cinematic history of Cinecittà itself and another dedicated entirely to Federico Fellini, devised by his protégé, an Oscar-winning set designer, Dante Ferretti.

Beyond the warehouse-like structures that house Cinecittà’s 19 stages, tourists can wander through its back lots and permanent sets. The most extensive is a fiberglass reproduction of an ancient Roman city, complete with an amphitheater and triumphal arch. It is a reminder of the studio’s glory days in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when it was used to make epics including “Ben Hur” and “Cleopatra” and earned the title of “Hollywood on the Tiber”.

Fellini's Amarcord was filmed here

 

Until quite recently, says Cinecittà’s ceo, Nicola Maccanico, “this was a place where people came to experience the history of cinema and where, every so often, someone would come to make a film.” For the most part, the directors were either Italian or of Italian descent, such as Martin Scorsese, who made “Gangs of New York” at the studios, or Anthony Minghella, who chose Cinecittà for “The English Patient”. But all that may be about to change drastically.

In absolute terms, Italy is the largest beneficiary of the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery fund: it has received or borrowed more than €200bn ($210bn). Of that, €260m has been earmarked for upgrading and vastly expanding Cinecittà. “The production of films, series and documentaries is undergoing a dizzying growth,” says the culture minister, Dario Franceschini. “We must make sure we’re ready.”

The plan is to increase the number of stages on the existing site to 24 and develop a new, 31-hectare site nearby. The new plot, just half a kilometre away at its nearest point, will have an additional eight stages and 16 hectares of back lot. Whether you measure it by surface area or the number of stages, Cinecittà is about to expand by more than two-thirds. It will also acquire some state-of-the-art equipment already in use in studios in America and Britain—including a giant led screen that immerses actors in the fantasy they are enacting far more effectively than a traditional green screen.

A more recent film, Under the Tuscan Sun

 

 

 

 

The question is whether this huge investment will pay off. Until a couple of months ago, the answer was patently yes. Cinecittà was fully booked, its fortunes having improved gradually over the past ten years, partly because of the advent of streaming. But the announcement in April of a drop in subscriptions to Netflix has cast a shadow over the entire film and TV industry. And now large parts of the world economy face inflation and maybe recession.

Mr. Maccanico agrees that “there could be a period of consolidation. But I think that the spaces that we are going to create at Cinecittà would be viable even in a period of slow growth.” Rome, he argues, holds immense attractions for film-makers, even in the face of growing competition from lower-cost studios in eastern Europe.

First, a generous tax break: a 40% credit on eligible production expenses incurred in Italy, which can be up to 75% of the total production cost and a maximum of €20m a year. Then there are Cinecittà’s seasoned technicians. And finally, says Mr. Maccanico, there is Rome itself. “If you say to a Charlize Theron we’re going to be shooting for six months in Sofia or six months in Rome…” Mr. Maccanico leaves the sentence unfinished, but with an eloquent lift of the eyebrows that implies that, for stars used to a certain quality of life, the choice is obvious.  

More of Rome's Legacy

Influence of Roman Architecture

Roman architecture has been copied all over the world: triumphal arches like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the Jefferson Memorial in Washington and neoclassic buildings for governments and universities. The arch was the Romans’ most important development in architecture. With ensuing experience, their engineers pushed forward to create the vault and the dome. These elements were used extensively, combining stone and concrete for construction of bridges, aqueducts, basilicas, stadium and palaces all over the empire.

 

The Alcantara Bridge in Spain still standing

The Pantheon represents the apex of this evolution with its dome 43 meters in diameter, the largest unreinforced solid concrete dome in the world. Some bridges and aqueducts built with this technology are still functional, such as the famous Alcantara Bridge in Spain, 600 feet long with six arches, 148 feet high. Only after the eighteenth century, with the Industrial Revolution and the production of steel, was the stone arch surpassed with the use of new material and technical advances.  Arch, column, vault, and capital have Latin roots.

 

The Pantheon in Rome

Many ancient structures like the Pantheon, the Colosseum and the Roman Forum are still standing thanks to the invention of concrete. The formula has cement, rock fragments and lime.   It is durable due to addition of pozzolana, a reddish, volcanic ash which prevents cracks from spreading. The way it was worked: pounding the material and removing most of the water.  Its formula was lost in the Middle Ages, later rediscovered and widely used all over the world. Modern concrete exposed to salt water corrodes within decades. Instead, this ancient concrete used also for seawalls and harbor piers is stronger today than when it was first mixed 2000 years ago. The reason, scientists have recently determined, is that the chemical reaction produced tobermorite crystals.

 

Ancient walls around Rome

This technology allowed Rome to build long-lasting infrastructure. Rome itself, in the second century AD, boasted 11 aqueducts that allowed the construction of enormous public baths, about 900 more modest baths, and underground sewers promoting public health and hygiene. Some are still in use today. The baths were a mix of a spa and a campus with exercise areas, pools, saunas and libraries. There were major imperial baths, majestic and luxurious in many cities.  Even small towns all over the empire often had public baths supported by local merchants. For a fee, homeowners could have potable running water in the pipes of their homes.

Enormous public arenas were built throughout the empire. Passion for the games is another legacy. The Colosseum could hold up to 70,000 spectators and, by means of 80 wide exits and a series of well-planned corridors and stairways, could empty in only 12 minutes. It has represented the standard for sports arenas constructed all over the world. It is largely intact after 20 centuries.

The Colosseum

The Circus Maximus, an oval track with bleachers for over 300,000 people was the largest stadium of all time, where horse races and all sorts of spectacles were held for more than 1000 years. Chariot races had passionate fans like today for football or baseball, and people were betting on the result.  In a day there were 24 races. Between the races there were also acrobats and actors entertaining the crowd.  There were also mock naval battles, processions, animal hunts, and gladiator combat.  It was also a place for young people to meet while they cheered on their team.

The four chariot teams had different colors

 

The Legacy of Rome - the Alphabet and Latin

The Alphabet and Latin

 Rome has a rich and long history that goes back 2800 years to the Etruscans and the Greeks and it has been the center of Christianity for the last 2000 years. It was the first city to reach a population of about a million people at the apex of the territorial expansion in the third century AD. Imagine a single political entity covering Europe, the British Isles, North Africa and the Middle East with long periods of peace, one language and one currency. Rome is called the eternal city as one of the great cities in history and for its vast contribution to western civilization. The Roman alphabet and Latin are among the most important.

Roman letters carved into stone

The alphabet used in the ancient Roman language is known as the Roman alphabet. It was influenced by the earlier Greek alphabet and the Etruscan alphabet but the Romans developed it further. With the passage of time, a script with upper and lower case letters was developed. Although over the centuries different letter-forms appeared, especially in the medieval period, the ancient forms the Romans carved into stone inscriptions are still used today. After all, the ubiquitous font Times New Roman is clearly a reflection of that early writing.

The Pantheon

Latin was originally spoken in the area around Rome, known as Latium. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it subsequently would quickly spread over a larger part of Italy, in direct correlation to Roman conquests. Latin became the language of conquered areas because local people started speaking it, and not because the population was displaced by Latin-speakers. Latin was not imposed officially on peoples brought under Roman rule. Latin was the official language and was necessary for anyone seeking to play an important role in administration, politics, and military.

With the foundation of the Roman Empire, a large portion of the western world would come to speak various forms of Latin or have it intermingled with their own tongues. The Roman Legions carried a spoken form of Latin throughout the Roman provinces. Especially in the rest of Italy, Gaul (France) and Spain, this would become mixed with the local languages, and lead to the new languages known as the Romance languages. Without Latin, very few of the tongues we speak today would be possible or recognizable in their current forms.


Latin survived the fall of the Roman Empire. As the centuries passed, it continued to be an international language of the educated and social elite, accompanying the modified tongues of the common people. The language of the Catholic Church was Latin, and all scholarly, historical, or scientific work was written in it. After the medieval period, with the Renaissance, interest in classical Latin as a means of artistic and literary expression grew. Many ancient manuscripts were re-discovered and appreciated during this time.
Latin continues to be important in scientific, medical and legal terms, which allow easy comprehension in the various western languages. For example, Latin is fre­quently used in medical terminology, such as “bacterium”, “umbilicus”, “cerebellum”, etc. Latin was used in creating the scientific names for flora and fauna.  After the Dark Ages, from the twelfth century on, the economic and social development in Europe led to the rediscovery of Roman law, which was then assimilated by many European countries. Still today, we use terms like “modus operandi”, “habeas corpus”, “veto”, “quid pro quo”, “ad hoc” and “ipso facto.”

The Latin language is the bedrock of the language of Western Civilization. Modern students find that having a basis in Latin is useful for learning Romance languages, and even to improve their vocabulary in English.

Inscription from the time of emperor Claudius

As you are walking in Rome, you naturally see Latin inscriptions in the Forum and on ancient monuments like the Pantheon. A place to see more, where they are described in context, is at the the Terme di Diocleziano (Baths of Diocletian) in front of the Termini station. (This is described in the book WALK ROME as part of Walk 6.)

The museum includes an epigraphy section dedicated to Latin inscriptions, including vases, sarcophagi, tombstones and objects worked in metal. The ground floor includes the most ancient writings in Latin and in Greek in Italy. Among the most important are ceramic fragments with the writing REX (Latin for “king”), found near the Regia in the Roman Forum, and the dedica­tions to Castor and Pollux found near Lavinio, a town near Rome. Also on the ground floor are inscrip­tions which describe the popular asso­ciations in “colleges of occupations” which, according the historian Plu­tarch, go way back to the king Numa, that is to the sixth century BC. There are traces of writing of merchants and artisans, freemen and slaves, butch­ers and sellers of flowers, flutists, and associations for actors and singers.

How to spot the best gelato in Italy

 How to spot good quality gelato in Italy – and avoid the fakes

To create the authentic Italian gelato, artisans use much less fat in the mixture compared to ice cream, and churn it at a slower speed so that less air gets mixed in.

This contributes to a denser texture and more intense flavors than fluffy, whipped ice cream. Gelato is also served at a slightly higher temperature than ice cream, allowing the flavors to shine through. However, Italy doesn’t regulate how terms like ‘gelato’ and ‘artisanal’ are used, so it can be tough for the uninitiated tourist to distinguish between the truly good stuff and the cheap imitations.

For this article we spoke to an Italian gelataio (gelato maker) and one of Rome’s top food authors to identify the tricks anyone can use to spot real gelato a mile off.

 

Good quality gelato

1. Containers

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but you should absolutely judge gelato by the container it’s served in. Look for flat metal tins, which may have lids on them. Plastic tubs are a definite no, but metal tubs don’t always guarantee quality on their own.

Lids are always a good sign, as it shows the gelato is being carefully kept at the right temperatures – and that the gelateria is respected enough that it doesn’t need to draw in customers with bright colors and fancy decorations (see the next point).

The denser texture of gelato as compared to ice cream also means that flat, metal ‘spades’ are better tools than curved ice cream scoops, so take a look at how the ice cream is being served.

2. Colors

For a quality gelato, you want one with a high proportion of natural ingredients, and that means no (or very little) added coloring.

“A quality gelato will never have very vibrant colors, but natural ones,” explains gelataio Domenico Maggiore. “For example, pistacchio should never be green like you might think, but brownish.”

For berry colors, look for deep, muted reds rather than shocking pink, and lemon should be white rather than yellowy. Look at the tone as well. Maggiore warns: “Gelato should never look shiny – that means there are too many sugars, or that it’s oxidized, which means it’s old.”

3. Texture

Remember how a key difference between gelato and ice cream was that the former has less air and a denser texture? This can help you identify the real stuff in a shop.

“Consider the height of an ice cream in the container; if it is piled up too high and doesn’t melt, it means it is rich in vegetable fats and emulsifiers,” explains Maggiore.

Rome food journalist and author Katie Parla adds that the whipped-up mountains of ice cream might be unsafe as well as lacking in flavor. “Gelato overflowing its bin carries the defect of being above the legal service temperature, creating food safety risks,” she warns.

 

Signs to avoid when choosing gelato

4. Flavors

Even if you know exactly which flavor you’re going to order, it’s worth seeing which other options are on offer, as this can give a valuable clue to the gelato’s quality. Tourist favorites such as cookies and cream and bright blue bubblegum (usually called ‘puffo’, which means smurf) are generally a bad sign – though good gelaterias might still offer them as a crowd-pleaser in addition to quality flavors.

You might also spot the exact same flavors and labelling in several different stores, which is a giveaway that this isn’t artisanal gelato but mass-produced, either delivered in bulk or made from a mix. Fruit flavors which are out of season show that they probably aren’t using fresh ingredients. In a good gelateria, you won’t find any fruit that can’t also be found at local market stalls that month.

So what should you look for?

Seasonal fruit flavors are a good sign, and any quality gelateria will serve fior di panna/latte, the basic ‘plain’ flavor of pure milk or cream (it’s rare, and usually not promising, to find vanilla flavored gelato).

These simple flavors should be strong and creamy, without embellishment like sauces or chocolate chips, and if they’re not on offer at all, it’s a sign the shop is using inferior ingredients. Most gelaterias offer free tasting spoonfuls (and if they don’t, get out of there!) so try the fior di panna – if it’s bland or covered up with added flavors, it’s a sign that the other flavors won’t be up to scratch either.

5. Ingredients

“A microscopic fraction of Rome’s thousands of gelato shops use all natural ingredients,” says Rome foodie Katie Parla, who has written an award-winning cookbook and offers food tours of the capital. She says fresh, natural ingredients are a “prerequisite for quality”, and that all Italian gelaterias are required to display their ingredients.

Study the list, and if you see ingredients like vegetable oil (olio vegetale) or artificial colors and flavors (usually shown as a number and letter code), Parla advises you to “run away”. The same applies if the ingredients list itself is hard to track down: most gelaterias are proud to show you what goes into their creations.

6. Design

This tip is based less on the science behind gelato-making and more on common sense. Clued-up visitors to Italy know that it’s generally best to avoid the tourist trap restaurants with chequered tablecloths, long menus in many languages, and a charming waiter beckoning in customers from the street.

Apply the same logic to gelaterias: often, the very best won’t need to do a huge job to look inviting, because if the gelato’s good enough, word will spread. That means a huge sculpture or cardboard cut-out of an ice cream cone could be a red flag, and if there are dozens of flavors on offer, they’re unlikely to all be premium quality.

                Catherine Edwards, The Local, This article was first published in 2017.

 

Italy is known for its top-tier gelato, so it’s no surprise the country wants to maintain that status. And to do so, it’s considering laws dedicated to the quality of the frozen treat. The proposal ties bad gelato-making practices to fines and even suggests banning ingredients like artificial flavors and colors.