Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film, The Great Beauty directed by Paolo Sorrentino was filmed entirely in the palazzos, terraces, famous and secret gardens of a decadent Rome, incapable of surprise and exquisitely beautiful. To retrace a few sequences of the film, an itinerary through the city can only start from the first scene, at the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola, the “Fontanone” of the Gianicolo Hill, a theatrical “display” of water from Lake Bracciano made to arrive in Rome by Pope Paul V Borghese in the 1600s, inspired by Roman triumphal arches, with three arches and angels bearing coats of arms by Ippolito Buzio.
Also on the Gianicolo, in Via Garibaldi, the Tempietto del Bramante in San Pietro in Montorio is the setting for the meeting of Jep and a mother looking for her daughter, who is hiding. The monument, in one of the monastery’s two courtyards, in the early 1500s became a model for the architecture of Rome.
On the other side of the Tiber River, in Via Giulia, a road ordered by Pope Julius II at the beginning of the 16th century for the renovation of Rome, Viola, Gambardella’s dear friend, lives with her son in Palazzo Sacchetti. In the middle of the night, after having crossed a deserted Piazza Navona, filmed with a more detailed shot of the baroque church of Sant’Agnese in Agone to the west, Jep walks to near-by Palazzo Pamphilj to accompany Orietta/Isabella Ferrari home.
The party for the protagonist’s sixty-fifth birthday takes place on a terrace between Via Bissolati and Via Sallustiana, a short distance from Via Veneto and Villa Medici. The garden of Villa Medici, the elegant 16th-century residence on the Pincio Hill in Viale della Trinità dei Monti, serves as a backdrop to the night-time walk of Ramona/Ferilli and Jep/Servillo with Stefano, a sort of Saint Peter with keys that open buildings and gardens.
One of the keys opens Palazzo Barberini, where the dim light illuminates Raphael’s Fornarina, moved for the occasion to a spacious hall; in the 18th-century square designed by Piranesi, another huge key is to the famous keyhole framing the dome of St. Peter’s, seen through the Knights of Malta’s garden on the Aventine Hill.
We are now far from the centre of Rome, but close to another unexpected set: the party at the home of Lillo, a collector of contemporary art, in Via di Villa Pepoli, a hidden and exclusive street in San Saba just beyond the Aventine Hill. Also contemporary, the rarefied atelier where Gambardella helps Ferilli try on her dress for the funeral of their friend Viola’s son, reclining on a stone sofa in an unexpected Salone delle Fontane, near the Palazzo delle Esposizioni and Viale Europa, the EUR district’s shopping street.
The green Parco degli Acquedotti, in the Appian Way Regional Park, is a silent and imposing witness to the performance of the mad artist Talia Concept hitting her head against one of the ancient stones. The Park, between Via Appia and Via Tuscolana, is characterized by seven aqueducts (Anio Vetus, Anio Novus, Aqua Marcia, Tepula, Iulia, Aqua Claudia and Acquedotto Felice)
At the Baths of Caracalla (Thermae Antoninianae), one of the largest and best preserved ancient thermal complexes, inaugurated in AD 217, there is certainly the most Fellini-like scene of The Great Beauty: one of Jep’s friends, a magician, trying to make a giraffe disappear.
In the Renaissance portico with a fountain of the Orsinis’ Palazzo Taverna, in Via dei Gabrielli, the protagonists search for an elderly nun called “the saint”; in Palazzo Spada, in Piazza Capo di Ferro, the view of the entrance is given a Borromini perspective; Palazzo Braschi, seat of the Museum of Rome between Piazza Navona and Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, is used by the director for some interior scenes. In the chapel and perhaps in the staircase, the hand of Giuseppe Valadier is recognized; while Palazzo Altemps, located in Piazza di Sant’Apollinare and home to the National Roman Museum, has offered many of its artworks to the scenes of the film.
Still to be discovered is the protagonist’s home, with its privileged close-up view of the Colosseum: we are in Piazza del Colosseo, at the corner of Via Capo d’Africa, in a building with a small gable on the loft’s terrace, certainly the best place for enjoying the view of the Colosseum, symbol of all that is Roman, in its magnificence and deep wounds. The Colosseum cannot be missing in any film about Rome, let alone in The Great Beauty, for which it is practically the logo. In fact, Jep Gambardella’s loft directly overlooks the Flavian Amphitheatre which in daylight, but more often at night, appears as a vision.
Finally, the statue of Marforio, in the courtyard of the Capitoline Museums’ Palazzo Nuovo, one of the six “talking statues” of Rome, is famous for its role as a “spokesperson” for complaints against the established powers that the people of Rome delivered with their satirical messages. A replica of the statue appears in the poster of the film behind Jep dressed in yellow and white sitting on a marble bench.