Subject
The excerpt shown is from “C’era una volta” (Once Upon a Time), the 1967 cinematic telling of a Neapolitan fairy tale, produced by Carlo Ponti and directed by Francesco Rosi. The story is inspired by some of the novellas composing “Il pentamerone”, or “Lo cunto de li cunte” (“The Tale of Tales”) by Giovan Battista Basile, cavalier and man of letters living in the latter decades of the 16th and early part of the 17th centuries. The work was published posthumously, in 1674, thanks to the efforts of the author’s sister, the famous singer Adriana Basile. In this scene we see a tournament of arms between Moorish and Christian princes within the original Circus Maxentius, clearly under restoration during filming.

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, over the site of a villa once owned by Herod Atticus and Annia Regilla, in the 2nd century AD. In this scene, horses gallop alongside the spine running the down the middle of the circus, on which Maxentius had placed the Egyptian obelisk brought to Rome centuries earlier, by Domitian, for the Temple of Isis in Campus Martius. (In 1651 the obelisk was transferred again to the centre of Piazza Navona, becoming part of the Fountain of the Rivers by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.) Also visible in the scene are the remains of the masonry once supporting tiers of circus seats, and the large tribune for accommodation of the emperor himself. Near the end of the scene, as she scrambles through the walls (in “opus vitae”, i.e. alternating rows of tuff stone and bricks), we see the splendid Isabella Candeloro (Sophia Loren), a commoner of the Kingdom of Naples who lives by her wits, as best she can.

Director
Francesco Rosi

Year
1967

Subject
A scene from “To Rome with Love”, 2012, written and directed by Woody Allen, with a cast including Roberto Benigni and Penélope Cruz, telling four different stories in the cinematic setting of the city of Rome. The episode catalogued here, set in the Villa dei Quintili on Via Appia Antica, features Jack, architecture student, tempted by love for Monica, his partner Sally’s best friend. John (Alec Baldwin), an experienced American architect, confronts the young man about the risks of temptations.

The sequence opens with the music of “Non dimenticar le mie parole”, a 1937 song by Trio Lescano and Emilio Livi. A car passes under the Acqua Clodio in the modern Parco degli Acquedotti, on the way to the site of the monumental Villa owned in the 2nd century AD by brothers Sextus Quintilius Condianus and Sextus Quintilius Valerius Maximus, situated at the 5th-6th miles of Via Appia Antica. The villa was taken under imperial domain in 182-183 AD, when Emperor Commodus, accusing them of plotting a conspiracy, had the brothers killed. The scene of Monica and Leonardo with camera takes place in the remains of the residential part of the villa; in the background is Monte Cavo (ancient Mons Albanus), a characteristic hill of the Castelli Romani. The dialogue with John is set within the structures of the thermal baths, characterised by the enormous calidarium (with a glimpse of its large windows, once closed by stained-glass windows) and the frigidarium (which still retains a precious polychrome marble floor).

Director
Woody Allen

Year
2012

Subject
The excerpt seen is from the 1954 episodic comedy directed by Alessandro Blasetti, “Tempi nostri – Zibaldone n. 2” (Our Times – Zibaldone No. 2), in particular from the episode “The Photographic Camera” featuring Totò (Dionillo, the dandy) and Sophia Loren (the girl). The scene, filmed in a studio, depicts a typical landscape of the Appia Antica with background of Roman aqueducts and the mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, as well as its characteristic cypresses and maritime pines. Many of these were planted in the years 1909-1913 under Antonio Muñoz, Inspector of the Royal Office of Monuments. Totò and Loren recite their parts among reconstructions of ancient monuments, statue bases, funerary altars and bas-reliefs.

The large sepulchre seen behind the protagonists is certainly modelled on the original tomb of Hilarus Fuscus, at the 4th mile of the Appia Antica, itself reconstructed by Luigi Canina, using brick for the façade. Between 1850 and 1853, the Piedmontese architect and archaeologist, at the behest of Pope Pius IX, had carried out a grandiose work of restoration along the first 16 kilometres of the Appian Antica, bringing to light the route and restoring many tombs. The scenographer has recreated the brick façade, in which Canina had inserted several marble fragments found nearby and a large funerary relief divided into three niches, with the busts of five figures in frontal view. Today, at the site of the original tomb we see a concrete copy, while the original is held in the Baths of Diocletian of the Museo Nazionale Romano. The inscription bearing the name of Fuscus once inserted in the reconstruction has disappeared, a fate befallen many of the marble fragments displayed by Canina, in what is essentially an open-air museum.

Director
Alessandro Blasetti

Year
1954

Subject
In the 1987 film “Intervista” (Interview), Federico Fellini portrays a scene on a blue tramcar of the old Società delle Tramvie e Ferrovie Elettriche di Roma (Rome Electric Tram and Railway Company). Riding the tramcar, Sergio Rubini, playing the young director Fellini, arrives in Rome to interview a matinee idol. Along the way the tram follows Via degli Olmi, alongside a stretch of the Acquedotto Alessandrino, passes a medieval tower, and then arrives on Via Appia Antica near the so-called Mausoleo di Casal Rotondo.

This imposing tomb, circular with diameter of about 35 metres, originally sheathed in travertine blocks, dates to the end of the 1st century BC. Around the 13th century a defensive tower, possibly pertaining to the Savelli family, was built in extension to the tomb. This was later adapted as a small private dwelling. In 1850-1853, next to the tomb, Luigi Canina raised a brick wall as an architectural backdrop, inserted with marble fragments he attributed to the monument itself. Having discovered an inscription among these, Canina further declared that the mausoleum had been dedicated to Messalla Corvinus, consul in 31 BC, by his son Marcus Valerius Messalinus Cotta. Today, scholars believe that the marble fragments embedded in the brickwork would instead derive from a funerary monument of smaller dimensions than Casal Rotondo. Unfortunately, accumulated acts of vandalism have considerably reduced the number of walled-in marble fragments. Fellini imagines the tram running on rails along the Appia Antica towards the centre of Rome. As the tram proceeds, Rubini, the young Fellini, takes encouragement from the words of a Fascist hierarch and the smiles and laughs of a young woman. As the tram passes the villa of Emperor Maxentius, Fellini waves to a woman shaking out a sheet from a window of a substantial farmhouse. This is in fact the Casale or “manor house” built by the Torlonia family during the 1820s and 1830s precisely over the site of the entrance to the monumental Mausoleum of Romulus, son of Emperor Maxentius, who drowned in the waters of the Tiber in 309 AD.

Director
Federico Fellini

Year
1987

Subject
The scene shown here, filmed along the Appia Antica, is taken from the 1956 film “La banda degli onesti” (The Band of Honest Men), directed by Camillo Mastrocinque and featuring Totò, Peppino De Filippo and Giacomo Furia. The three friends, having come into possession of a stolen money-printing plate, decide to begin counterfeit production. Antonio Bonocore (Totò), however, having learned from his son, a Financial Guard, that the police are seeking out counterfeiters, convinces his accomplices to desist. In reality, none of the three has had the courage to spend a single one of the false banknotes, and meeting at night along the Appia Antica, they decide to set a bonfire for the destruction of the suitcase with counterfeit banknotes and printing plates.

In this final scene, Antonio (Totò), Giuseppe Lo Turco (Peppino De Filippo) and Cardone (Giacomo Furia) arrive at the fifth mile of the Appia Antica. The location is near the slight curve in the ancient road for passage over the Fossae Cluiliae, the ditch separating the territories of the cities of Rome and Alba Longa and the purported site of battle between their respective champions, the Orazi and the Curiazi. Walking together, the three friends pass a tumulus of late Republican age surmounted by a cylindrical masonry body, traditionally known as the Tomb of the Curiatii, and pause at a two-story funerary monument known simply as Laterizio I, entirely clad in bricks in an elegant two-coloured design. During restorations under the direction of Luigi Canina in the mid-1800s, this monument, typical of the 2nd century AD, had numerous marble fragments walled into the façade. Many of these having been lost to theft, the voids were then filled with modern travertine pieces during further restorations along the Appia Antica, in 1999-2000. The iron gate seen behind the three “partners” closes what was once the burial cell of the tomb. With the bonfire lit, we see the cement core of a circular sepulchre with an addition of medieval construction in reused material, and again in the background, the Laterizio I tomb flanked by another tomb faced in brick, surmounted by a small medieval tower.

Director
Camillo Mastrocinque

Year
1956

Subject
The scenes shown here are from the 1963 film “Le mépris” (Contempt) by Jean-Luc Godard, based on the 1954 novel “Il disprezzo” by Alberto Moravia. The clip, featuring a long dialogue between Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli, is set at Casale di Santa Maria Nova, purchased by the Italian state on 12 April 2006 by from the wealthy American couple of Elena and Evan Ewan Kimble. The grounds with manor farmhouse are located at the fifth mile of the Appia Antica, near the Villa dei Quintili. The Kimbles were well-connected in the world of cinema, resulting in the use of their home as a set in several films, particularly in the 1960s.

The structure originated in the second century AD as a cistern serving in local water distribution, including to the Villa dei Quintili, and then in the Middle Ages was adapted with construction of a defensive tower. Between the 13th and 14th centuries the building was again modified as a manor farmhouse serving the substantial estates of an order of Olivetan Monks. These same monks, in the 16th century, continued with further masonry construction, including a small semicircular chapel. In the 1950s, then owner Count Iacopo Marcello commissioned architect Luigi Moretti for renovations of the building as a private residence. The interior scene of this excerpt takes place in a large hall now used by the Appia Antica Archaeological Park for staging of temporary photo exhibitions. The iron gate through which Bardot and Piccoli exit is the same one used today to access the site. Passing outside, we can appreciate the important changes taking place in the area since the time of filming. Behind the two actors we can also make out the masonry walls with the semicircular votive chapel, created by the monks.

Director
Jean-Luc Godard

Year
1963

Subject
This humorous clip is from the 1982 film “Attila, flagella di Dio” (Attila, Scourge of God), directed by Franco Castellano and “Pipolo”, pseudonym of Giuseppe Moccia. The film is considered an example of the so-called trash genre of 1980s Italian cinema. Diego Abatantuono plays King Ardaric, who proclaims himself Attila and then marches on Rome in revenge for the sacking of his tribal village of Segrate. Hilariously, the barbarians mistake the aqueduct that from the mid-2nd century AD had supplied the Villa dei Quintili, for the “perforated” walls of the city, according to them now abandoned.

A large burial mound from the 1st century BC serving as the base of Torre Selce endows it with extraordinary grandeur, while the “flints”, in reality pieces of marble and travertine, assure its visibility from great distances. A reasonable hypothesis is that the tower would be the same “turris de Arcionibus or “de Arcione” noted in mediaeval sources, probably named in reference to the arches of the nearby Quintili aqueduct, or to the load-bearing features of its construction. By the 13th century AD, the tower had become known as Turris de Sclaceis, for the materials featured in its construction (scilicis = flint). From the acts of Pope Innocent IV in 1243 and of Pope Boniface VIII in 1299, we know that the tower had passed from Emperor Conrad III of Swabia to the Monks of St. Gregory in 1150. A drawing of the 17th century Alessandrino Cadastre shows the upper battlements and the defensive fore-wall, neither of which any longer exist.

Director
Castellano and Pipolo

Year
1982

Subject
In this excerpt we see Richard Burton in the role of Mark Antony as he rides a chariot along a stretch of the Via Latina, now included in the Park of the Tombs of Via Latina. Also starring Elizabeth Taylor in the title role and Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar, this is the 1963 American colossal film “Cleopatra”, until then the third most expensive of all time, costing $44 million and nearly driving 20th Century Fox out of business. The sets and costumes were magnificent, including 65 dresses worn by Cleopatra, of which one handmade from 24-carat gold.

The film, while recounting the last years of the Roman Republic, the civil wars of Caesar versus Pompey and Anthony versus Octavian, focuses on Cleopatra’s loves, first for Caesar and then Mark Antony, and ends with the suicide of the seductive queen of Egypt. In this very brief clip, Richard Burton rides along the Via Latina past the so-called Barberini Tomb, still surviving today since 160 AD, including with its polychrome brickwork. On the opposite side of the road, embellished for the film by numerous statues, we see another ruin: the remains of a probable entrance to the great villa of Demetriades, just outside the current boundary of the park. As today, when the film was shot this place still survived as authentic Roman countryside, with the ancient road, monuments, and pine trees planted in the early 1900s, making it a perfect setting for a historical epic. The scene shows the moment when Mark Antony goes to meet Calpurnia at the house of her husband, Julius Caesar, to tell of his new wedding to Cleopatra, a few months earlier in Alexandria, Egypt.

Director
Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Year
1963

Subject
Clip from the 1961 movie “Accattone” that marks Pier Paolo Pasolini’s directorial debut. This is a scene set on a part of the Via Appia Antica, near Rome. In this part, the actor Franco Citti (dubbed by Paolo Ferrari) is sitting by a side of this roadstretch rich in archaeological remains.

You can see some Roman sepulchres’ ruins without their decorative cladding, statues and other marble decorations, many of which are missing due to acts of vandalism during the centuries along the Via Appia. In the scene, the ancient Roman paving is covered by an asphalt layer that makes it like any other road open to vehicular traffic: a car passes near the big pyramidal sepulchre at the entrance of Villa dei Quintili at the 5th mile. A little bit further, in 1951 the Grande Raccordo Anulare road interrupted the way of the Regina Viarum, but in 1999, thanks to the 2000 Jubilee funds, an underpass was built and that section of the Via Appia was set free.

Director
Pier Paolo Pasolini

Year
1961