Subject
The excerpts catalogued are from “La Dolce Vita” of Federico Fellini, 1960, considered a masterpiece of the director and one of the world’s greatest films. Initially contested by critics, the film became a watershed in the history of Italian cinema, leading to a permanent break from the Neorealist current to instead describe the advance of the “New Italy”, opening up to the hopes, dreams and illusions of a “Dolce Vita”. The film begins with the flight of two helicopters transporting a statue of Christ to the Vatican; from above we perceive the booming city of Rome and see some of the city’s imposing archaeological resources, notably the monumental arches of the aqueduct planned in 38 AD during the reign of Emperor Caligula and inaugurated in 52 AD by his successor Claudius. Subsequently, Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), a journalist in the yellow press, follows the arrival of American actress Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) in Rome. Welcomed at Ciampino airport by photographers and journalists, they form a procession taking her to the Hotel Excelsior in Via Veneto. Their vehicles advance along the Appia Antica, at that time paved as an ordinary road, passing near the great Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, built in the fourth decade of the third century BC. Near the entrance to the Villa of Emperor Maxentius, the shiny new cars pass a shepherd with his flock, still a daily scene on the Appia Antica. Marcello and Sylvia, taking a night-time drive in a very impressive Triumph TR3 convertible, return to the Appia Antica. Near the fifth mile they stop in what is now Via Pompeo Licinio, beside an ancient wall made of stacked courses of squared tufa blocks: probably the remains of a Roman ustrinum, a structure once used for cremation funerals.

Director
Federico Fellini

Year
1960

Subject
“Rappresaglia” (Reprisal), 1973, was directed by George Pan Cosmatos, born in Florence to a Greek family. The film, starring Richard Burton (Lieutenant Colonel Kappler) and Marcello Mastroianni (Father Antonelli), followed several years after publication of “Death in Rome” by Robert Katz. Like the book, the film deals with the events of a partisan attack occurring in Via Rasella and the subsequent Nazi reprisal, known as the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine, on 24 March 1944, which saw the death of 335 Italian civilians and military personnel, political prisoners, Jews and common prisoners.
A column of German lorries, loaded with persons destined for death, passes along the Appia Antica. Particularly recognisable are the large brick funerary monuments of the 5th mile; also Porta San Sebastiano, or Porta Appia, one of the main gates of the Aurelian Wall, reduced to a single archway during the renovations of 401-402 AD at the behest of Emperor Honorius. Also seen is the so-called Arch of Drusus, reported in ancient sources as erected in 9 BC in honour of Drusus the Elder, i.e. Germanicus, son of Livia and adopted son of Emperor Augustus, but known to have been used in 211-216 AD in support of the Acqua Antoniniana (a branch of the Acqua Marcia), which fed the Baths of Caracalla. In the early 5th century this same arch was re-devised as the counter-gate to the secure courtyard behind Porta Appia. As we view the passage of the trucks we can also glimpse numerous marble fragments: remains of funerary monuments, many of them placed on the side of the road by Luigi Canina, who between 1850 and 1853, excavated and restored a long stretch of the road, creating a true open-air museum. In particular, the camera briefly frames an epigraph commemorating Lucius Aurelius Diophanthus, freedman of a certain Glabra, and his noble wife Titinia (LARELLIO GABRAI.L / DIOPHANTO / TITINIAI NOBILI / UXSORI).

Director
George Pan Cosmatos

Year
1973

Subject
The excerpts catalogued are from “Roma”, directed by Federico Fellini, 1972. The film is structured as a fantastical documentary recounting the Rome of the Fascist 1930s and of the 1970s in blocks of autonomous sequences, proceeding from subject to subject without transition, in which Fellini’s own autobiographical experiences transfigure reality. The film creates a visionary and lively portrait of a Rome, through the memories of a provincial youth who arrives in the city shortly before the World War II: a vision of the city that, through Fellini’s gaze, transports us to newly imagined places.

In this Rome, the Appia Antica is certainly not missing, as an integral element of the city. The excerpts open with a night shot of the so-called Arch of Drusus, in the foreground, and a striking Porta San Sebastiano, the ancient Appian gate of the city wall built under Emperor Aurelian beginning in 271 AD. In the following sequence, the camera brings into view the Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, symbol of the Appia Antica. This monumental tomb was built in the last decades of the 1st century BC to honour a rich and influential Roman noblewoman, related by birth and marriage to two of the most prominent families of republican Rome: Metelli and Crassi. Quintus Caecilius Metellus, Cecilia’s father, a consul, received the cognomen Creticus for having conquered the island of Crete. Cecilia’s husband was probably Marcus Licinius Crassus, along with Caesar and Pompey a part of the First Triumvirate, established in 59 BC. The excerpt closes with the kind of scene readily visible along the Appia Antica until the time of the restoration carried out by state institutions in the latter years of the 20th century.

Director
Federico Fellini

Year
1972

Subject
The excerpts are taken from the 1964 film “Che fine ha fatto Totò baby?”, (Whatever Happened to Baby Totò?) a parody of the thriller “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”, of 1962, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Credited to Ottavio Alessi, the film was in fact largely directed by Paolo Heusch. The story features Totò and his brother Pietro (played by Pietro De Vico, sublime comic sidekick) who steal a suitcase at Rome’s Termini station but in it, discover a corpse. Setting out by car to rid themselves of the suitcase, they pick up two girls hitchhiking with a suitcase similar to theirs, and then accompany the pair to their villa of lodging. This is the Casale di Santa Maria Nova, at the fifth mile of Via Appia Antica, today at number 251 of the same road.
The villa, the property of the state since 2006, was earlier owned by the American film producers Elena and Evan Ewan Kimble, and used more than once for film scenes. The excerpts filmed outside the farmhouse reveal the scene of the Roman countryside in the 1960s, before the changes leading up to the current day. We see a view of the building structure, rich in construction phases: from a masonry cistern dating to the 2nd century AD, transformed as a medieval tower, then by the Olivetan Monks as an agricultural manor house, from which a small semi-circular votive chapel is visible, then the 20th century transformations as a civil residence. The scene of the marijuana smokers takes place inside the villa, in the large space now used by the Appia Antica Archaeological Park for temporary exhibitions. By the end of the story, Totò too has taken drugs that drive him insane, and after gruesome and sadistic murders, send him to the asylum.

Director
Ottavio Alessi

Year
1962

Subject
The excerpt catalogued is from “La grande bellezza” (The Great Beauty), a 2013 film directed by Paolo Sorrentino, with screenplay by Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello, considered a masterpiece of world cinematography, having won an Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA for best foreign film, four European Film Awards, nine David di Donatello and five Nastri d’Argento.
The director draws on Rome’s Parco degli Acquedotti, between the Via Tuscolana and the Appia Antica, as the setting for one of the film’s most ironic and cynical scenes. The backdrop consists of the monumental arches of the aqueduct known to posterity as the Acqua Clodio, for Claudius, emperor who finished the construction and inaugurated it in 52 AD, although the works were in fact planned and begun in 38 AD under Caligula. At the summit of the aqueduct, two superimposed conduits carried waters from the springs of the Aniene Valley into the city, in the final tract uniting the Acqua Clodio and the Acqua Anio Novus in respective conduits. A performance by a naked body artist, Talia Concept (Anita Kravos), her head beneath a transparent veil, takes place at the foot of the mighty arches constructed of squared blocks of tuff, some 28 metres in height. The scene is witnessed by a gathering of spectators, including Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), lying on the grass of what is now a beautiful public park.

Director
Paolo Sorrentino

Year
2013

Subject
“Nerone” (Nero) is a film of 1976, directed by Castellacci and Pingitore, starring Paolo Stoppa, Enrico Montesano, Maria Grazia Buccella, Paola Borboni and Paola Tedesco. A parody of the ascension to the imperial throne by Nero (reigned 54-68 AD), the film had little fortune with the critics, being described as “an unhinged attempt to re-evaluate, in a pseudo-comic key, the emperor Nero.” Disputed by Christians, disliked by the Senate, opposed by his mother Agrippina, poor Nero is interdicted and locked up in an asylum, but eventually, posing as Jesus and persuading St. Peter to renounce his revolutionary intentions, he succeeds in foiling Seneca’s plot. The segment seen here, featuring Nero (Pippo Franco) and the character Roscio (Franco Lechner, stage name “Bombolo”), takes place inside the Circus of Maxentius on the Appia Antica.

Between the 2nd and 3rd mile of the Via Appia, Emperor Maxentius (306-312 AD) had built a grandiose residential complex consisting of a palace, circus and dynastic mausoleum. In this scene we see the remains of the masonry once supporting the tiers of circus seats. It was here that Maxentius moved the Egyptian obelisk originally brought by Domitian for the Temple of Isis in the Campus Martius, transferred again in 1651 to its placement as part of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fountain of the Rivers, at the centre of Piazza Navona. The second segment sees the meeting of Vinicio (Piero Santi) and the Christian Licia (Paola Tedesco), whose love prevails over the cruel persecutions of Nero.”

Director
Mario Castellacci and Pier Francesco Pingitore

Year
1976

Subject
“Er più – Storia d’amore e di coltello” (The Big Man – A Story of Love and Knives) is a film of 1971 by Sergio Corbucci, inspired by the figure of Romeo Ottaviani, the Roman bully famously known as “er Tinèa” or “er più de Trastevere”, who exercised his dominance over the late 1800s and first decade of the 1900s. In this excerpt, set in the frigidarium bath of the Villa dei Quintili, at the fifth mile of Via Appia Antica, a toast is made at one of the fox-hunting parties periodically organised in the Roman countryside through the 19th and the early years of the 20th centuries.
Suddenly, a melee breaks out between two factions of Roman bullies. Nino Patroni, “Er Più” of the Borgo district (Adriano Celentano), with a friend and his brother-in-law Antonio “Totarello” Cerino (Ninetto Davoli) flee the battle, chased by a pack of dogs. Retreating head over heels, the three flee cross the villa grounds, from the noble residence to the entrance on Via Appia Antica. Passing through the arches of the aqueduct that fed the noble estate, then through an abandoned cistern, they finally topple into a pond. This pond, still existing today, is of considerable interest for the presence of plants quite rare to the Roman landscape, among which angelica, wild parsnip, marsh mallow and Lysimachia. Since at least the 16th century, this same pond has appeared in prints and drawings of the fifth mile of Via Appia Antica, immortalised in imagery. The pool is in fact artificial, fed by a complex system of wells and cisterns. The scene ends at the monumental nymphaeum originally flanking the entrance to the Villa dei Quintili, with grandiose features enhancing the majesty of the complex. Er Più climbs the ancient structure, fortified in the Middle Ages, only to fall ruinously before the eyes of Rosa Turbine (Claudia Mori).

Director
Sergio Corbucci

Year
1971

Subject
The scene shown is from the 1913 black-and-white film “Quo vadis?”, by Enrico Guazzoni, based on the historical novel of the same name from Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz. The silent feature is considered one of the first “colossals” of film history. Guazzoni achieved sensational results thanks to the inclusion of thousands of extras and seemingly countless actors, among which Amleto Novelli (Vinicio), Gustavo Serena (Caio Petronio), Lea Giunchi (Licia), Amelia Cattaneo (Eunice), Carlo Cattaneo (Nerone), Bruto Castellani (Ursus).

Complex and innovative stage designs reproduced Rome in the ancient times of Emperor Nero, to spectacular effect. In the excerpt seen here, accompanied by the notes of the Prelude in E major by Johann Sebastian Bach (Well-Tempered Clavier, vol. II, BWV 878), we recognise Saint Peter fleeing Rome to avoid martyrdom, accompanied by Hazarfus. The apparition of Jesus along the Via Appia, however, induces him to return to the city and accept martyrdom. Today, at the site of this legendary meeting near the Catacombs of San Callisto, there stands the small church of the Domine Quo Vadis, reconstructed in the 17th century over the original 9th-century chapel. Inside the building is a stone slab said to show the footprints of Jesus, a copy of the original held in the Basilica of San Sebastiano Beyond the Walls. This latter slab, in fact, originated as a pagan ex voto: the offering of a traveller to the god Rediculus as they departed Rome, or perhaps after a successful return.

Director
Enrico Guazzoni

Year
1913

Subject
The scene is from the 1981 film “La pelle” (The Skin) by Liliana Cavani, based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by journalist and officer Kurt Erich Suckert, also known by the pen-name of Curzio Malaparte. The film describes the horrors of Naples in 1943-1944, amidst misery and rubble, as well as the excesses of a city just liberated from Nazi-Fascist occupation. Having departed from Naples, in this clip we see the soldiers and vehicles of the US Fifth Army arriving at Rome, on 4 June 1944. Marcello Mastroianni plays the part of the boastfully exaggerating Malaparte, as he guides the allies and recounts the scenes, with great creativity, to General Mark Cork (Burt Lancaster). As Malaparte lists the names of illustrious persons “imaginarily” entombed along the famous stretch of road, the column pauses at the circular mausoleum known as Casal Rotondo, and then continues towards the Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella.
A custom of the wealthier Romans was to place their tombs along roadsides beyond the city walls. Here the passers-by, while admiring the structures, could read the funerary inscriptions and enliven the memory of the deceased. The placement of a tomb on an important artery such as the Via Appia was a sign of social status, and for passers-by, the monumentality of the burial emphasised the prestige of the owning family.

Director
Liliana Cavani

Year
1981

Subject
The excerpts catalogued are from the 1961 comedy “Sua eccellenza si fermò a mangiare” (His Excellency Stopped to Eat), the last film of Totò with director Mario Mattoli, later reissued in re-edited version under the title ‘”Dr. Tanzarella, Personal Physician of … the Founder of the Empire” (1967). In the 1930s, riding in a classic Lancia cabriolet, Ernesto (Ugo Tognazzi), Dr. Biagio Tanzarella (Totò), Silvia (Virna Lisi), Lauretta (Lauretta Masiero) and Countess Clara Bernabei (Lia Zoppelli) arrive at an elegant villa on Via Appia Antica.

The villa seen is in fact Casale di Santa Maria Nova, at the fifth mile of Via Appia Antica, purchased by the Italian state in 2006 from the couple Elena and Evan Ewan Kimble. The villa now pertains to the Appia Antica Archaeological Park, and can be visited together with the nearby Villa dei Quintili, as part of a single archaeological complex. The cinematic view allows some understanding of the status of the structure in the early 1960s, including the different building phases. Originally a Roman structure of the 2nd century AD, possibly a two-storey cistern, a defensive tower had been added in late antiquity, before conversion as a manor farmhouse by the Olivetan Monks. In the 20th century the building was again converted as a private residence, following divestment from the Church’s rich holdings in these localities, known as the Patrimonium Appiae. A parade of at the Italian Youth of the Littorio arrives at the Casale, featuring four young “Balilla” on drums, leading a corps of the Young Italian Girls, in amusing contrast to the two Carabinieri standing rigidly in formal uniform at the gates. The ground floor of the monumental complex, behind the glass doors seen in the clip, now hosts an interpretive display on the history of the place, while the staircase seen on the right leads to the upper floors, now also used for temporary exhibitions.

Director
Mario Mattoli

Year
1961