La dolce vita - cinematic masterpiece

Commentary on decadence of 1950s Rome saw Fellini hailed as a genius

Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in the
most famous scene from Fellini's classic

La dolce vita, a film still regarded as one of the greatest in cinema history, was screened in front of a paying audience for the first time on this day in 1960.

After a preview before invited guests and media at the Fiamma cinema in Rome, the Capitol Cinema in Milan was chosen for its public premiere. The movie went on general release in Italy the day afterwards and made its London debut on 8 February.  It was shown in America for the first time in April of the following year.

Directed by Federico Fellini, the film won the Palme d'Or, the highest award presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960 and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Director for Fellini, although ultimately the production team had to be content with the Oscar for Best Costumes.

It won numerous awards in Italy, while the brilliant Nino Rota’s soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy.  In America, the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle made it their best foreign film of 1961.

Federico Fellini is remembered by many as
the greatest of all Italian film-makers

The film is episodic rather than having a conventional plot, following the life of Marcello Rubini, a somewhat jaded magazine gossip columnist portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni, over seven days and nights in the Rome of the late 1950s.

It is a decade in which the city, desperate to forget the shame of Fascism and the devastation inflicted on the country by World War Two, revels in everything modern and exciting about what feels like a reborn Italy.  The stars created by the country’s renascent movie industry, now joined by an influx of Americans and others, are the new gods and goddesses. Rubini, accompanied by his photographer friend Paparazzo, follows their every move.

Immersing himself in the glitzy nightlife around the capitol’s fashionable Via Veneto, the handsome, sharply-dressed Rubini himself indulges in the hedonistic pleasures on offer with only occasional restraint, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend, Emma.

But in Fellini’s story he is struggling with an inner conflict, at once chastising himself for the shallowness of his profession and his failure to make the most of his writing talent, but unable to resist the temptations of alcohol, easy sex and opportunities to behave outrageously that seem to present themselves each day.

Mastroianni became one
of Italy's biggest stars

Fellini conveys this, and delivers a critique on the state of an Italian society he is willing to see as in moral decline, through what is essentially a series of parables, in which the characters are sharply drawn and the scenes resonantly symbolic.

The episode in which Anita Ekberg, cast as a visiting Swedish starlet, lures Mastroianni to follow her, fully clothed, into the Trevi Fountain, is the one for which the film is most remembered, while the name of Paparazzo has entered the language to describe any photographer who pursues the rich and famous.

Yet it has a complexity that continues to intrigue, its near three-hour duration demanding that viewers return again and again to appreciate it in all its subtlety. Fellini’s fellow director Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote that "La dolce vita is too important to be discussed as one would normally discuss a film.”

More than 13.5 million Italians paid to watch the film, attracted not least by its controversial nature.  Its opening sequence, in which a gathering of bikini-clad girls interrupt their sunbathing to wave as a helicopter towing a statue of Jesus passes overhead, was condemned by the Catholic church as a parody of a second coming of Christ. In countries including Spain and Portugal it was banned for several years.

Fellini once said that the original germ of the idea for La dolce vita came from the fashion in the 50s for the so-called sack dress, a waistless garment that was tapered at the hemline but billowed out in the middle, which he imagined to represent a way in which a physically beautiful woman might conceal her moral shortcomings from view.

Others have speculated that he might have been influenced by the Montesi scandal that had reached its conclusion only two years before he began shooting.  The film ends when Rubini and others are partying on a beach at dawn when fishermen haul ashore a huge, ray-like fish that had become caught in their net and died.  The Montesi scandal, which linked Rome society figures to drug-fuelled orgies at a luxurious beachside villa, began when the body of Wilma Montesi, a 21-year-old woman who had gone missing in Rome the day before, was discovered lying face down at the water’s edge on a beach near the capital.

Nicola Salvi's Trevi Fountain, with the statue of
Oceanus by Pietro Bracci in the centre

Travel tip:

The Trevi Fountain, which was symbolically turned off and draped in black after Marcello Mastroianni died, was officially opened by Pope Clement XIII in 1762. Standing at more than 26m (85 feet) high and 49m (161 feet) wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in Rome and probably the most famous fountain in the world. It was designed by a Roman architect, Nicola Salvi, but he died when it was only half finished. Made from Travertine stone quarried in Tivoli near Rome, the fountain was completed by Giuseppe Pannini, with Oceanus (god of all water), designed by Pietro Bracci, set in the central niche. Coins are traditionally thrown into the fountain by visitors, using the right hand over the left shoulder. It was once estimated about 3000 euros were thrown into the fountain each day, money that helped feed the city’s poorest citizens.

A picture postcard from Milan showing the
Capitol Cinema building 

Travel tip:

Milan’s former Capitol Cinema was located on the corner of Via Croce Rossa and Via dei Giardini, not far from Via Manzoni and Via Monte Napoleone.  Designed in the late 1930s, it was part of an imposing building that combined shops, offices and apartments. With seats for 1,350 people, it screened its first film in September 1949 and hosted many premieres, often attended by the directors and stars. The debut of La dolce vita attracted such a large crowd that windows were reportedly broken in the crush.  The film was so successful it continued to be shown at the Capitol for several months. Other famous Italian films to make their public debut there included Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli) and Vittorio De Sica’s La ciociara, released outside Italy as Two Women, which featured an Oscar-winning performance by Sophia Loren.  Sadly, the Capitol’s popularity declined in the 1980s and it was closed permanently in 1984. Today the building houses a large clothes shop. 

Also on this day:

1578: The death of portrait painter Giovanni Battista Moroni

1932: The birth of football coach Cesare Maldini

1964: The birth of football coach Carolina Morace

The Festival of Saint Agatha of Sicily

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Pope Sixtus V

Pontiff who cleaned up and rebuilt Rome and reformed church

Pope Sixtus V introduced a programme of
measures to tackle Rome's problems

Pope Sixtus V, whose five-year reign was one of the most effective of any pontiff in history, was born Felice Peretti on this day in 1521 in Grottammare, a coastal resort in the Marche region that was then part of the Papal States.

Succeeding Pope Gregory XIII in 1585, Sixtus V inherited an administration that was riddled with corruption and a city of Rome that to a large extent fallen into the hands of thieves and criminal gangs.

He responded with a series of measures that brought about profound change with far-reaching consequences for the city and the wider country, making his mark on a scale that few pontiffs had matched before or since.

As well as tackling crime with brutal ruthlessness, he introduced significant reforms in the administration of the Catholic Church and commissioned lavish building projects that changed Rome from a medieval city to a one of Baroque grandeur.

The son of a poor farm hand in Grottammare, the future pope entered a monastery when he was nine years old and joined the Order of Friars Minor three years later. His familiarity with adversity made him resourceful and strong.

After being ordained, he impressed many with his preaching and was a popular choice as pope, attaining office at the age of 64 following Gregory XIII’s death.

Pope Gregory XIII left Rome's finances in a
parlous state, while crime gripped the city

He was determined from the start to be remembered as a pope who left Rome and the Church in a much better state than the one he inherited.

The brigands and criminal gangs who held the city in their grip were his first targets, and he used the full strength of his papal forces to crush them, beginning a clampdown that would eventually see as many as 27,000 criminals and their mob bosses rounded up an executed.

As a deterrent to others, Sixtus V would regularly have the heads of executed brigands placed on top of stakes around the city.

The result was that within two years Rome was the safest city in Europe, the countryside was free of bandits and the economy prospered.

Sixtus tackled his reforms of the central administration of the church with similar zeal. By a papal bull - edict - issued in 1586,  he redefined the Sacred College of Cardinals by setting the number of cardinals at no more than 70, a limit that stayed in place until the pontificate of John XXIII (1958–63).

In 1588 he overhauled the Curia - the government of the Catholic Church - in its entirety, establishing 15 congregations - departments - in a structure that also remained substantially unchanged until the 1960s.

Pope Sixtus V had an estimated 27,000
criminals put to death in a ruthless purge

In his crackdown on waste and corruption, he introduced harsh financial policies, which included the sale of offices, the creation of new loans, regulation of prices and the imposition of new taxes.

Sixtus V was determined to refill the treasury, although he could hardly be accused of sitting on the new wealth he created.

Turning his attention to the urban plan of Rome, he ordered the creation of broad new streets that were the beginnings of how the map of the city looks today. The Porta del Popolo, where he placed an obelisk in the piazza, the Via Sistina and Via delle Quattro Fontane all owe their existence to Sixtus V.

The Cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica was completed after he ordered the architect Giacomo della Porta to finish what had been a ten-year plan of works inside 24 months.  Sixtus V also built the loggia of Sixtus in the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano and the chapel of the Praesepe in Santa Maria Maggiore, as well as commissioning repairs to the Quirinal, Lateran and Vatican palaces.

He restored Rome’s four Egyptian obelisks, including that in St Peter's Square.

Sixtus V restored the aqueduct of Septimus Severus - called the Acqua Felice after his baptismal name - in addition to the Acqua Vergine, which flows into the Trevi Fountain, with the purpose of bringing clean water into a less inhabited area and encouraging people to live there. The Palazzo Barberini and the Triton fountain were later made possible thanks to Sixtus V’s aqueduct.

Sixtus V placed a statue of St Paul atop the
Column of Marcus Aurelius, built in 193AD

Not everything he did was popular. He displaced many residents by razing buildings to make way for his new streets and showed little appreciation for antiquities. He envisioned converting the Colosseum into a wool factory with homes for its workers, and turned the Column of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan’s column into pedestals for statues of St. Peter and Paul.

In his foreign policies, Sixtus V proposed the conquest of Egypt and supported King Philip II of Spain in his planned invasion of England, with ambitions to excommunicate Elizabeth I, although in the event none of those things happened.

Sixtus V died on August 27, 1590, the last pope to have used the name Sixtus.  He was disliked by many of his subjects but history has recognized him as a significant figure in the Counter Reformation, and a pope who took on great enterprises and made significant achievements. He also left five million crowns in the coffers of what had been a bankrupt treasury.

The remains of the 16th century fortress stand over the
coastal resort of Grottammare, where Pope Sixtus V was born

Travel tip:

Grottammare is one of the beach resorts that make up the Marche region’s Riviera delle Palme, a stretch of coastline around the larger town of San Benedetto del Tronto. It is notable for a fine, sandy beach but also for the well preserved remains of a fortress overlooking the town that was built following the sacking of Grottammare by the Montenegran Princes of Dulcigno in 1525.  The centre of the older part of the town is Piazza Peretti, a square enclosed by the Church of San Giovanni Battista, the Town Hall, Municipal Tower and Teatro dell'Arancio.  Grottammare takes pleasure in celebrating its geographical position on the 43º parallel, the line of latitude that also passes through the cities of Assisi (Italy), Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Lourdes (France), Medjugorje (Bosnia), Vladivostok (Russia), Sapporo (Japan), Buffalo and Milwaukee (United States).

The Fountain of Moses at the end of the Aqua
Felice aqueduct into Rome

Travel tip:

The Aqua Felice was the first aqueduct built during the Roman Renaissance, more than 1,000 years after the ancient aqueducts in Rome had been cut by invading Goths. Sixtus V commissioned his favourite architect, Domenico Fontana, who came up with the Fountain of Moses which also serves as the terminus of the Aqua Felice. Although the fountain, sometimes known as ‘Fat Moses’, has never been particularly well-liked, it is seen as representative of the great urban renewal that took place in Rome during the Renaissance, particularly under Sixtus V.


More reading:

Urban VIII, the pope whose extravagance led to disgrace

Pius V, the pope for excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy

The kidnapping of Pope Boniface VIII

Also on this day:

The Festa di Santa Lucia

1466: The death of Renaissance sculptor Donatello

1720: The birth of playwright Carlo Gozzi


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Giuseppe Gioachino Belli – poet

Sonnet writer satirised life in 19th century Rome

Giuseppe Gioachino Belli's poems often poked
 fun at the Roman Catholic church

The poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli was born on this day in 1791 in Rome and was christened Giuseppe Francesco Antonio Maria Gioachino Raimondi Belli.

He was to become famous for his satirical sonnets written in Romanesco, the dialect of Rome.

After taking a job in Civitavecchia, a coastal town about 70km (44 miles) northwest of Rome, Belli’s father moved the family to live there, but after he died - of either cholera or typhus - his wife returned to Rome with her children and took cheap lodgings in Via del Corso.

Living in poor circumstances, Belli began writing sonnets in Italian at the suggestion of his friend, the poet Francesco Spada.

In 1816, Belli married a woman of means, Maria Conti, and went to live with her in Palazzo Poli, the palace that forms the backdrop to the Trevi Fountain. This gave him the freedom to develop his literary talents. They had a son, Ciro, in 1824.

The palace was Belli’s home for 21 years, from 1816 to 1837, but he was able to travel to other places in Italy where he came into contact with new ideas. It was during a stay in Milan that he first encountered dialect poetry and satire. The sonnets of Carlo Porta provided him with a model for the poems in Roman dialect that eventually were to make him famous.

The plaque marking the birthplace of Giuseppe Gioachino
Belli, in Via dei Redentoristi in central Rome

His sonnets were often satirical and anti-clerical. For example, he dubbed the Cardinals ‘dog-robbers’ and referred to Pope Gregory XV as ‘someone who kept Rome as his personal inn.’

However, during the democratic rebellion that led to the declaration of a short-lived Roman Republic of 1849, he defended the rights of the Pope.

Belli produced more than 2,200 sonnets that document the life of common people in 19th century Rome. He kept them hidden, apart from occasionally giving recitals to friends. Just before his death he asked his friend, Monsignor Vincenzo Tizzani, to burn them but fortunately his friend handed them over to Belli’s son, Ciro, who published a selection of them in 1866, editing them to prevent them from causing offence at the time.

The first complete edition of Belli’s work was not published till 1952, nearly a century after his death.

Belli satirised the way ordinary
 working class Romans lives

Belli’s sonnets expressed with humour what he observed of the Roman lower classes, satirising the way people lived and the clerical world that oppressed them.

Ironically, the poet later worked as an artistic and political censor for the papal government and prevented the work of Shakespeare, Verdi and Rossini from being circulated, among others.

After his wife’s death in 1837, Belli’s economic situation had worsened again and as he grew older, he lost a lot of his vitality and became increasingly critical of the world around him, describing himself as ‘a dead poet’.

He died in Rome after a stroke in 1863 at the age of 72.

His nephew, the painter Guglielmo Janni, wrote his biography in ten volumes, which was published posthumously.

The monument to Belli off Viale Trastevere

Travel tip:

A plaque next to the door marks Giuseppe Gioachino Belli’s birthplace at number 13 Via dei Redentoristi, a back street near the Basilica of Sant’Andrea delle Valle, which is in Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, a short distance from the Pantheon in central Rome.  There is a monument to the poet in Piazza Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, which is off Viale Trastevere in Rome, overlooking the Tiber near the Basilica of San Crisogno. It was placed there in 1913 and paid for by the public of Rome.

The Palazzo Poli is the palace immediately behind
the Trevi Fountain in the centre of Rome

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Poli, where Belli lived for more than 20 years, dates back to 1573, when the Anguillara family commissioned the architect Martino Longhi to transform a former palace of Baldovino Del Monte, brother of Pope Julius III. In time it was acquired by Lucrezia Colonna and was renamed in 1712 after her husband, Giuseppe Conti, the Duke of Poli. When plans were drawn up for the Trevi Fountain, the central section was demolished and replaced with the monumental facade designed by Luigi Vanvitelli as the backdrop for fountain, which was designed by Nicola Salvi and completed by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762.

More reading:

The brilliant lyric poetry of Giacomo Leopardi

How Vittorio Alfieri's poetry inspired the oppressed

Ugo Foscolo - poet and revolutionary

Also on this day:

1303: The kidnapping of Pope Boniface VIII

1893: The founding of Italy's oldest surviving football club


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Pietro Bracci - sculptor

Artist best known for Oceanus statue at Trevi Fountain

Pietro Bracci's statue, Oceanus, is the
centrepiece of the Trevi Fountain in Rome

The sculptor Pietro Bracci, who left his mark on the architectural landscape of Rome with the colossal six-metre high statue Oceanus that towers over the Trevi Fountain, was born on this day in 1700 in Rome.

The monumental figure is shown standing on a chariot, in the form of a shell, pulled by two winged horses flanked by two tritons. Bracci worked from sketches by Giovanni Battista Maini, who died before he could execute the project.

He also completed work on the fountain itself, built in front of Luigi Vanvitelli’s Palazzo Poli. This was started by Bracci’s close friend Nicola Salvi, who had been commissioned by Pope Clement XII to realize plans drawn up by Gian Lorenzo Bernini that had been shelved in the previous century. Salvi died in 1751, before he could complete the work. Giuseppe Pannini was also involved for a while before Bracci took over in 1761.

The work confirmed Bracci as a major talent of his time in the field of sculpture, one of the greatest of the late Baroque period, continuing in the tradition established by Bernini in the previous century that gave the city of Rome so many wonderful monuments.

Bracci’s most significant works in addition to the Trevi are considered to be four monumental tombstones, two of which are in St Peter’s Basilica.

The monumental tomb of Maria Clementina
Sobieski in St Peter's Basilica

The most beautiful, and arguably the one that provides the fullest expression of Bracci’s talent, is the one that commemorates Maria Clementina Sobieski (1742), descendant from the Polish king, who was the wife of the "Old Pretender", James Stuart, one of the Catholic Stuart claimants to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. The sculpture is in polychrome with an image of Maria Clementina in mosaic held aloft by Charity.

Bracci also sculpted the figures for the tomb of Benedict XIII (1734) in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, which was designed by the architect Carlo Marchionni, and for the tomb of Benedict XIV (1763–1770) in St Peter’s Basilica, completed with the help of his pupil Gaspare Sibilia, as well as the polychromatic tomb of Cardinal Giuseppe Renato Imperiali (1741) in Sant'Agostino in Rome.

The son of a wood sculptor, Bracci was an apprentice in the workshop of the sculptor Camillo Rusconi for six years. He became a member of L’Accademia dell’Arcadia in Rome and of L’Accademia di San Luca and opened his own workshop in the Piazza Trinità dei Monti in 1725.

He married Faustina Mancini, the daughter of the painter Francesco Mancini. They had a son, Virginio, who grew up to be a sculptor and architect, who was heavily involved with the construction of the town of Servigliano in the Marche, and gave much help and advice to the young Antonio Canova.

Bracci died in Rome in Rome in 1773 and was buried in the Pantheon, where his son had commissioned a bust of his father by Vincenzo Pacetti. 

The Trevi Fountain stands in front of the Palazzo Poli. It is
one of Rome's most visited tourist sites.

Travel tip:

The Trevi Fountain takes its name from its location in the Trevi district of Rome. An earlier fountain on the site was demolished in the 17th century. Nicola Salvi’s design was chosen after entries were invited to a competition. The idea of incorporating the fountain as part of the front of the Palazzo Poli came from a project by Pietro da Cortona, but the central triumphal arch with its mythological and allegorical figures, natural rock formations, and gushing water was Salvi’s idea. The immense fountain stands some 85 ft (26m) high and is approximately 160 ft (49m) wide. Its water, from the ancient aqueduct called Acqua Vergine, was long considered Rome’s softest and best tasting. The water today is not considered fit for drinking. The coins that are thrown into the fountain are collected daily and donated to charity.

The Piazza di Spagna and the Via Condotti seen from the
Piazza Trinità dei Monti, above the Spanish Steps

Travel tip:

The Piazza Trinità dei Monti, where Bracci opened his first workshop, is a square in central Rome adjoining the Renaissance church of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti, at the top of the Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti, better known as the Spanish Steps. During Springtime, just before the anniversary of the foundation of Rome, April 21, part of the steps are covered by pots of azaleas. Recently, the Spanish Steps have included a small cut-flower market. The steps are not a place for eating lunch, being forbidden by Roman urban regulations, but they are usually crowded with people.

More reading:

How Nicola Salvi's designs were chosen for the Trevi Fountain

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - the architect, more than any, who conceived the look of Rome

The consecration of St Peter's Basilica

Also on this day:

1942: The birth of 15-times world motorcycling champion Giacomo Agostini

2008: The death of Mario Rigoni Stern, war hero who became bestselling novelist

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Nicola Salvi – architect

Creator of Rome’s iconic Trevi Fountain

The Trevi Fountain was Nicola Salvi's masterpiece

The architect Nicola Salvi, famous as the designer of the Fontana di Trevi – known in English as the Trevi Fountain and one of the most famous and most visited monuments in Rome – died on this day in 1751.

He was working on the Trevi when he passed away, having been engaged on the project since 1732. It had to be finished by Giuseppe Pannini and the giant statue of Oceanus – the Titan God of the Sea in Greek mythology – set in the central niche, was completed by Pietro Bracci, yet Salvi takes credit as the lead architect.

Salvi ran a workshop in Rome that he had taken over when his master, Antonio Canevari, left the city in 1727 to take up a position working as architectural consultant to the king of Portugal in Lisbon.

He completed a number of commissions on behalf of Canevari but spent a good deal of his time tutoring others and might have made very little impression on architectural history had he not submitted entries for two design competitions run by Pope Clement XII in 1732.

One was for a new façade for the church of San Giovanni in Laterano, for which his design was commended and in which he did have some input along with Alessandro Galilei – the winner – and Luigi Vanvitelli.

Floodlights illuminate the fountain at night

The other was to revive a project started and then abandoned by Gian Lorenzo Bernini one hundred years earlier to design a new fountain at the end of the former Aqua Virgo Roman aqueduct, in front of the Palazzo Poli.

Accounts of the outcome vary, but there is agreement that Salvi’s design did not win, with plans submitted by either Galilei or Ferdinando Fuga preferred. However, both of those architects were from Florence and there was a public view that the job should go to a Roman and, after considering this, the pope decided to give it to Salvi.

Salvi imagined a fountain composed of a large central basin, surrounded by a rough-hewn cliff from which the Palazzo Poli appears almost to have been carved, the whole composition dominated by the statue of Oceanus, set into the central arched niche of the palace, standing directly above the point at which the water emerges.

The monumental façade of the Palazzo Poli was designed by Vanvitelli to provide the fountain with a suitably dramatic backdrop.

The end product, which takes its names from its location at the convergence of tre vie – three roads, represented a classic of Roman Baroque, the largest Baroque fountain in the city and the most significant building built in Rome in the 18th century.

The Via Nicola Salvi in Rome skirts the Colosseum

It defined the career of Salvi, who had been born in Rome in 1697 to a wealthy family thought to have been from Abruzzo originally. Precociously intelligent, he studied mathematics and philosophy before turning to architecture.

Until the Trevi, after a decline in the number of major structures commissioned across the city compared with the previous century, Salvi’s work had been relatively inconsequential, consisting for the most part of small, decorative projects.

He did build a baptistery at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls but that was destroyed in a fire of 1823, while his reconstructed Chiesa di Santa Maria a Gradi in Viterbo was flattened by bombing during the Second World War.

Salvi died at his home in Via della Colonna in Rome at the age of 53, having developed bronchial problems as a result of many hours spent working in the damp tunnels of the aqueduct.

Large crowds flock to the Trevi at all hours of the day

Travel tip:

The ritual of throwing coins over their shoulders into the Trevi Fountain is followed by thousands of visitors each day.  They used to be stolen regularly by gangs of thieves but a law was introduced making it a crime to fish coins out of the basin. Nowadays, the coins are collected by teams of municipal workers every night and given to a charity called Caritas, which converts the money into shopping vouchers for Romans who have fallen on hard times. The coins collected add up to around €3,000 each day.

Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita

Travel tip:

Part of the Trevi Fountain’s fame around the world is down to the starring role it has played in a number of movies, most notably Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, in which Anita Ekberg jumped into the fountain fully clothed, to be followed by Marcello Mastroianni. The monument also featured in Roman Holiday, Three Coins in the Fountain and Disney comedy The Lizzie McGuire Movie. When the revered Mastroianni died in 1996, the fountain was turned off and draped in black crepe as the city’s tribute.

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Marcello Mastroianni – actor

Film star who immortalised the Trevi Fountain

Marcello Mastroianni was an star of
Italian cinema for more than 45 years

Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni, who grew up to star in some of the most iconic Italian films of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1924 in Fontana Liri, in the province of Frosinone in Lazio.

He was the son of Ida Irolle and Ottone Mastroianni, who ran a carpentry shop. His uncle, Umberto Mastroianni, was a sculptor.

At the age of 14, Marcello Mastroianni made his screen debut as an extra in a 1939 film called Marionette.

His career was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he was interned in a German prison camp until he managed to escape and go into hiding in Venice.

He made several minor film appearances after the war until he landed his first big role in Atto d’accusa, directed by Giacomo Gentilomo, in 1951.

Ten years later, Mastroianni had become an international celebrity, having starred in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita opposite Anita Ekberg. He played a disillusioned tabloid journalist who spends his days and nights exploring Rome’s high society. The film is most famous for the scene in which Ekberg's character, Sylvia, wades into the Trevi Fountain.

Mastroianni followed this with a starring role in Fellini’s 8½  - Otto e mezzo - in which he played a film director who suffers from creative block while making a movie.

Mastroianni's famous Trevi Fountain scene with Anita
Ekberg in Federico Fellini's La dolce vita

He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times, for Pietro Germi's Divorce, Italian-style, Ettore Scola's A Special Day and Dark Eyes, directed by Nikita Mikhalkov. He is one of only three actors to have twice been awarded the Best Actor award at the Cannes film festival.

A Special Day was one of 11 films in which he starred opposite Sophia Loren, his on-screen partnership with whom was a feature of Italian cinema in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Mastroianni married Flora Carabella in 1950 and they had a daughter, Barbara. After they separated, he had a relationship with the actress Faye Dunaway. He later lived with French actress Catherine Deneuve and they had a daughter, Chiara Mastroianni.

Mastroianni in Divorce, Italian-style

He was rumoured to have had affairs with other actresses until, in 1976, he became involved with Anna Maria Tato, an author and film maker.

Mastroianni died from pancreatic cancer in 1996 at the age of 72. Both of his daughters, as well as Deneuve and Tato, were at his bedside.

The Trevi Fountain was turned off and draped in black as a tribute to him.

Travel tip:

Fontana Liri, where Marcello Mastroianni was born, is a small village in the Apennines, about 90km (56 miles) southeast of Rome and about 15km (9 miles) east of Frosinone. It falls within the remote hilly part of Lazio known as the Ciociaria, which is south of Rome and north of Naples and is named after the ciocie, sandals, traditionally worn by local people.

The Trevi Fountain is the largest Baroque fountain in Rome

Travel tip:

The Trevi Fountain in Rome, where Marcello Mastroianni paddled with Anita Ekberg in La dolce vita, was symbolically turned off and draped in black as a tribute to the actor after he died. The fountain was officially opened by Pope Clement XIII in 1762. Standing at more than 26m (85 feet) high and 49m (161 feet) wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in Rome and probably the most famous fountain in the world. It was designed by a Roman architect, Nicola Salvi, but he died when it was only half finished. Made from Travertine stone quarried in Tivoli near Rome, the fountain was completed by Giuseppe Pannini, with Oceanus (god of all water), designed by Pietro Bracci, set in the central niche. Coins are traditionally thrown into the fountain by visitors, using the right hand over the left shoulder. It is estimated about 3000 euros are thrown into the fountain each day, money which is used to subsidise a supermarket for the poor in Rome.

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Trevi Fountain inaugurated

Famous fountain now helps raise money for the poor

The Trevi Fountain was opened by Pope Clement XIII

Rome’s iconic Trevi Fountain, Fontana di Trevi, was officially opened by Pope Clement XIII on this day in 1762.

Standing at more than 26 metres high and 49 metres wide it is the largest Baroque fountain in Rome and probably the most famous fountain in the world.

It has featured in films such as La Dolce Vita and Three Coins in the Fountain.

For more than 400 years a fountain served Rome at the junction of three roads, tre vie, using water from one of Ancient Rome’s aqueducts.

In 1629 Pope Urban VIII asked Gian Lorenzo Bernini to draw up possible renovations but the project was abandoned when the pope died.

In 1730 Pope Clement XII organised a contest to design a new fountain. The Florentine Alessandro Galilei originally won but there was such an outcry in Rome that the commission was eventually awarded to a Roman, Nicola Salvi.

Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in the
fountain scene in Fellini's La Dolce Vita

Work on the fountain began in 1732 but Salvi died in 1751 when it was only half finished. Made from Travertine stone quarried in Tivoli near Rome, the fountain was completed by Giuseppe Pannini, with Oceanus (god of all water), designed by Pietro Bracci, set in the central niche.

Coins are traditionally thrown into the fountain using the right hand over the left shoulder. This was the theme of the 1954 film Three Coins in the Fountain and the award-winning song of that name.

An estimated 3000 euros are now thrown into the fountain each day and the money is used to subsidise a supermarket for needy people in Rome.

Travel tip:

One of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s most spectacular works in Rome is the fountain of the Four Rivers, Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, in Piazza Navona, with four marble figures symbolising the four major rivers of the world. It was designed in 1651 for Pope Innocent X.

The Fontana del Tritone in Piazza Barberini

Travel tip:

The Fountain of the Tritons, Fontana del Tritone, in Piazza Barberini in Rome was designed and built by Bernini near the entrance to Palazzo Barberini, the home of Pope Urban VIII’s family.

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Sandro Pertini - popular president

Man of the people who fought Fascism

Sandro Pertini (right) congratulates coach Enzo Bearzot
after Italy won the World Cup in Spain in 1982

Sandro Pertini, the respected and well-liked socialist politician who served as Italy's President between 1978 and 1985, died on this day in 1990, aged 93.

Pertini, a staunch opponent of Fascism who was twice imprisoned by Mussolini and again by the Nazis, passed away at the apartment near the Trevi Fountain in Rome that he shared with his wife, Carla.

After his death was announced, a large crowd gathered in the street near his apartment, with some of his supporters in tears.  Francesco Cossiga, who had succeeded him as President, visited the apartment to offer condolences to Pertini's widow, 30 years his junior.  They had met towards the end of the Second World War, when they were both fighting with the Italian resistance movement.

Pertini's popularity stemmed both from his strong sense of morality and his unwavering good humour.  He had the charm and wit to win over most people he met and was blessed with the common touch.

Sandro Pertini with his
customary pipe

He would make a point whenever it was possible of appearing in person to greet parties of schoolchildren visiting the presidential palace, sometimes joined the staff for lunch and endeared himself to the nation with his passionate support for Italy's football team at the 1982 World Cup final in Spain.

Pertini's life story was extraordinary.  Born in Stella, in Liguria, in the province of Savona, he was the son of a wealthy landowner and was given an expensive education, culminating in a Law degree from the University of Genoa.

He was patriotic inasmuch as he enlisted to fight in the Italian army in the First World War even though he opposed Italy's involvement, but his politics leaned towards the left.  After the war he joined the Unitary Socialist Party (PSU) and settled in Florence.

Already openly opposed to the Fascists, whose squads of paramilitary thugs beat him up more than once, his attitude hardened considerably when Giacomo Matteotti, the PSU leader, was murdered soon after accusing Mussolini's party of using violence and fraud to influence the 1924 elections.

He was arrested for the first time in 1925 for 'inciting hatred' after attacking the Fascists in print for their "barbarous domination" and sentenced to eight months' jail.  He managed to escape and fled to France.

Sandro Pertini made a point whenever possible of meeting
children in person when they visited the presidential palace

Pertini kept his head down at first, working as a taxi driver in Paris, but after moving to Nice to work as a bricklayer he was twice prosecuted for his role in political disturbances.  Back in Italy, where he felt compelled to return to join the anti-Fascist underground, he was arrested in connection with a failed plot assassinate Mussolini.

Exiled to Santo Stefano, an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, he was released with the arrest of Mussolini in 1943. Recaptured by the occupying Nazi forces and sentenced to death, he was freed by partisans and joined the anti-Nazi resistance movement.

By then the PSU had rejoined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) from which it had broken away previously, and after being part of the Constituent Assembly charged with designing the constitution for the new Italian Republic, Pertini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies under the PSI flag.

In 1968 he became president of the Chamber of Deputies and in 1978 President of the Republic, elected as a compromise candidate respected by politicians of the left and right.

Although by then he was 72, the pipe-smoking Pertini did much to restore the credibility of the political system in Italy at a time when the country was demoralised by internal terrorism, corruption scandals and a weak economy. He denounced the violence of the Red Brigades, spoke out against organized crime and expressed his disgust with South African apartheid, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and other dictatorial regimes. He also criticised the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Pertini was pictured playing cards with Dino Zoff, Franco
 Causio, and Enzo Bearzot on the plane home from Spain

By the time he left office in 1985, corruption was still a problem but the Anni di piombo - the Years of Lead - had been left behind, the economy was recovering well... and Italy had won the World Cup.

Always his own man, Pertini declined the opportunity to live in the Quirinale Palace, preferring his own apartment, and rather than be ferried around in state-owned limousines he had his wife drive him around Rome in a red Fiat 500.  Despite being an atheist, he had a close friendship with Pope John Paul II. He rushed to the Gemelli Hospital in Rome as soon as news reached him of the assassination attempt against John Paul II in 1981 and refused to go home until doctors assured him the pontiff was out of danger.

After Italy's World Cup victory, he invited the team to a reception at the Quirinale, telling striker Paolo Rossi, whose goals had been vital to the Azzurri triumph, that the chance to congratulate the players made it his "best day as President."

Stella San Giovanni nestles on a hillside overlooking
the coast of Liguria, not far from the port of Savona

Travel tip:

Sandro Pertini was born in Stella San Giovanni, one of five frazioni that make up an area collectively known as Stella, situated about 15 minutes inland from the Ligurian coastline not far from the sea port of Savona, which is notable for having been a major centre in the Italian iron industry and also as the one-time home of the explorer Christopher Columbus.  Its medieval centre is interesting for the Cathedral of Assunta and the adjoining Cistine Chapel and for the Priamar Fortress, built in 1542 after the Genoese had captured Savona. It later became a prison, where the revolutionary politician Giuseppe Mazzini was once held for being a member of a banned political organisation.

Hotels in Savona from Booking.com

The Trevi Fountain is the largest Baroque
 fountain in Rome 

Travel tip:

The Trevi Fountain, which takes its name from the Trevi district in Rome, was commissioned by Pope Clement XII and designed by Italian architect Nicola Salvi in slightly controversial circumstances. The Pope had organised a contest for the best design, which Salvi lost to Alessandro Galilei, but awarding the commission to a Florentine caused a public outcry in Rome and to curb unrest it was eventually given to Salvi by default. Standing 26.3 metres (86 ft) high and 49.15 metres (161.3 ft) wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in the city and one of the most famous fountains in the world, playing a starring role in Federico Fellini's film, La Dolce Vita.  Work began in 1732 and the fountain was completed in 1762, long after Salvi's death, with Pietro Bracci - who was responsible for setting Oceanus - the god of all water - in the central niche, taking over.

Rome hotels from Booking.com

More reading:

How the murder of Aldo Moro cast a shadow over Francesco Cossiga

Paying the price for his bravery - the tragedy of Giacomo Matteotti

John Paul II forgives the man who tried to kill him

Also on this day:

1607: The first performance of Monteverdi's opera, L'Orfeo

1896: The birth of restaurateur Cesare Cardini

1934: The birth of politician Bettino Craxi

1934: The birth of soprano Renata Scotto

(Picture credits: all Pertini pictures from Quirinale.it; Stella San Giovanni panorama by Davide Papalini; Trevi Fountain by Paul Vlaar; all via Wikemedia Commons)

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Luigi Vanvitelli – architect

Neapolitan genius drew up a grand design for his royal client

Giacinto Diano's portrait of Luigi Vanvitelli,
which is housed at the Royal Palace in Caserta

The most famous Italian architect of the 18th century, Luigi Vanvitelli, died on this day in 1773 in Caserta in Campania.

The huge Royal Palace he designed for the Bourbon kings of Naples in Caserta is considered one of the greatest triumphs of the Baroque style of architecture in Italy.

Vanvitelli was born Lodewijk van Wittel in Naples in 1700, the son of a Dutch painter of landscapes, Caspar van Wittel. His father later also took up the Italian surname Vanvitelli.

Luigi Vanvitelli was trained as an architect by Nicola Salvi and worked with him on lengthening the façade of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Palazzo Chigi-Odelscalchi in Rome and on the construction of the Trevi Fountain.

Following his notable successes with the facade of the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (1732) and the facade of Palazzo Poli, behind the Trevi Fountain, Pope Clement XII sent Vanvitelli to the Marche to build some papal projects. 

Vanvitelli worked with Nicola Salvi on the construction of the
Trevi Fountain and designed the facade of the Palazzo Poli 

At Ancona in 1732, he directed construction of the Lazzaretto, a large pentagonal building built as an isolation unit to protect against contagious diseases arriving on ships. Later it was used as a military hospital or as barracks.

Back in Rome, Vanvitelli stabilised the dome of St. Peter's Basilica when it developed cracks and painted frescoes in a chapel at St Cecilia in Trastevere. 


In partnership, he and Salvi worked on an extraordinary project that involved the construction in Rome of a chapel for King John V of Portugal, which was then disassembled and shipped to Lisbon to be rebuilt there.

Vanvitelli was eventually commissioned by Charles III, King of Naples, to build a summer palace for the royal family in Caserta and he modelled his design on the Palace of Versailles in France.

The imposing 1200-room Royal Palace seen from
the Grande Cascata waterfall

He drew up plans for a quadrilateral building, enclosing four courtyards, with 1200 rooms, a chapel, a theatre and the largest staircase in Italy.


Vanvitelli also devised an aqueduct system to bring in the volume of water needed to run the cascades and the fountains in the gardens.

The architect worked on the Royal Palace until his death in 1773, while also building a church and a monastery in Naples and designing the huge aqueduct that supplied the city with water.

Vanvitelli's Grande Cascata waterfall is a feature of the
Royal Palace's vast gardens

Travel tip:

The Royal Palace, one of the largest palaces erected in Europe during the 18th century, was in 1997 designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Vanvitelli wrote in his memoirs that it was the King who designed the palace. This may have been to flatter him or because Charles III knew was actually quite explicit in what he wanted. The celebrated staircase, 18th century royal apartments and court theatre are among the star features of the palace. The architect also designed the famous park, with its Grande Cascata waterfall.

Vanvitelli's unusual Lazzaretto di Ancona, a
pentagonal building on an artificial island

Travel tip:

Vanvitelli designed the unusual Lazzaretto di Ancona for Pope Clement XII, which is also sometimes known as the Mole Vanvitelliana. It is a pentagonal building built on an artificial island, which served as a quarantine station for the port town of Ancona in the 18th century.



More reading:

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Italy's last universal genius

Nicola Salvi - creator of Rome's iconic Trevi Fountain

Carlo Maderno - one of the fathers of Italian Baroque

Also on this day:

1869: The birth of sculptor Pietro Canonica

1926: The birth of movie actor Cesare Danova

1930: The birth of cycling champion Gastone Nencini

Selected books:

Italian Baroque and Rococo Architecture, by John Varriano

Italian Splendour: Palaces, Castles and Villas, by Jack Basehart

(Picture credits: Trevi Fountain by Diliff; Royal Palace by Reame;  Lazzaretto by Claudio.stanco; via Wikimedia Commons)

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