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A Visit To Cinecitta' - Hollywood On Tiber, The Factory OF Dreams

12/5/2017

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The studios of Cinecittà were inaugurated  80 years ago, on the 28th of April, by Benito Mussolini.
To celebrate this anniversary, the studios are more opened than ever to the public with different exhibitions (opened every day, except Tuesday, from 9.30 to 19.30) , sets (ancient Rome, Jerusalem, Florence in the 1400) and didactic activities for children. Especially on Sunday where it is also possible to have a picnic on the lawns around “Il Caffé, with the Federico Fellini’s “Venusia” that is there since he shot his “Casanova” in the 1976.
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Federico Fellini used to take the Via Appia Antica, the Appian Way, to get to his work when he was making a film in the studios of Cinecitta. It is not really the shorter and quicker way. With the underground (metropolitana) that leaves you in the front of the legendary address, 1055 via Tuscolana  ("Cinecittà" station), it is much easier. But a walk across the most beautiful consular road of the ancient Rome, shadowed by maritime pines and antique ruins, as the "maestro" used to do, is an unforgettable, magic experience. Perhaps the best way to be prepared to enter in the "Fabbrica dei Sogni", the "Factory of Dreams" as he called Cinecittà, also known as the "Hollywood on Tiber", the place where all the mythic movies of the Italian cinema, but also a lot of American peplum (Quo Vadis, Cleopatra, Ben Hur etc.....) and other big international productions were shot.
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Cinecitta' Entrance
Only a few years ago, if you were not working on a film in the studios of Cinecittà, you couldn't enter in that fabulous world. Now it is changed: you can visit every day, from the morning to the evening (at the exception of Tuesday), at least a part of the studios that Mussolini, aware of the importance of cinema (there was no TV or Internet at that time) for the propaganda, built in 1937.
A part of the studios were in fact transformed, these last years, in a museum where, if you like cinema, you feel in paradise. Surrounded by screens showing old movies in black and white, by fabulous costumes of the passed centuries (Cleopatra's dresses,  Fellini's Casanova costumes...), stars photos, objects used in different movies, manuscripts of some screenplays... and even the saloon of a spaghetti -western.
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Venusia from The Movie "Fellini's Casanova"
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A Typical Spaghetti Western Saloon
Federico Fellini, who almost lived there when he was working, has a place of honour. The exhibition starts with "The Fellini Room", just near the entrance of the famous studio 5, the biggest one were he directed all his movies. Even the famous via Veneto was reconstructed in Cinecittà for the "Dolce Vita" because, explained Fellini, "in a studio, I can make the light exactly as I want".
You can see and hear him in a documentary projected on one of the walls. The others are full of his drawings, all dreams and nightmares that where the real inspiration for his extraordinary movies. 

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Federico Fellini Dreams Drawings
At the end of a peregrination in a sort of labyrinth full of images and sounds that makes you a bit dizzy, you can enter in a submarine. Exactly the same one that you see on a little screen at the entrance where you can watch a scene from an American war movie, "U571", that was shot in Cinecittà in the 2000...
If you choose a guided visit, you can also walk all around Cinecittà, going through centuries and continents, with houses and streets constructed in wood, polystyrene and resin, as everything that is made by the extraordinary artisans of Cinecittà. The illusion is perfect, you are really transported elsewhere, in another time. Exactly like you are watching a movie.

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The Submarine From The Movie "U571"
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The Set From The Tv serial "Rome"
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The Set From The Movie "Gangs Of New York"
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Palazzo Braschi - The Museum Of Rome

3/5/2017

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From the Etruscan to the Contemporary Art, Rome is very rich in museums. But, one of them, called “ The Museum of Rome“, in the splendid Palazzo Braschi, looking out on the jewel of baroque, the Piazza Navona, is a very special one that helps, perhaps more that any other, to understand the real soul of Rome. It is the right moment to visit it: a few weeks ago, the museum reopened all his 3 floors after a long restoring and restyling work.
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Palazzo Braschi - Piazza Navona Entrance
Palazzo Braschi, with his entrance on the small Piazza di San Pantaleo and the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, is a magnificent example of the neo-classical style. It was constructed between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th.  First, by the Pope Pius VI, for his nephew,  Luigi Braschi. And that was the last construction of a Pope for his family, interrupted by the French Occupation of Napoleon. After a few years and the exile of the Pope in France, the construction went on. The monumental stairs and the chapel on the first floor are attributed to the famous neo-classical architect Giuseppe Valadier (that was Italian in spite of his French name!)

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Piazza Navona - Rome
In 1871, when Rome became the capital of Italy, the Braschi family sold the palace to the State and the palace housed the ministry of Interior. During the Fascism, it was used for some exhibitions and other events by the Mussolini’s regime and the first  “Museum of Rome” was opened (in an another place, rating the “Boccca della Verità”) in 1930 to underline the link between the ancient Rome and the Fascism.
After the war, 300 homeless families used to live in Palazzo Brachi until 1949, damaging unfortunately a part of the beautiful mural and ceiling fresco. In 1952, the “Museum of Rome” was transferred in the palazzo Braschi . It closed on 1987 to be restored, opened again in the 2002 and had a new restyling, floor by floor, these last years.

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The Palazzo During Fascism
The museum is made by a suite of huge rooms, beautifully decorated by gracious neo-classical grotesque and other mural paintings, with a rich collection of sculptures, paintings, old photographs, furniture etc…on a thematic base:  Portraits of the governors (almost of the eighteenth century), landscapes (almost seventeenth but also twentieth century), celebrations and games, photographs of destructions (of the narrow streets of medieval Rome) and constructions (of a modern city).
 
The paintings, even those of the end of the nineteenth century, show us how Rome was a small town with extraordinary monuments, churches and palaces, in the middle of the countryside. And this, not such a long time ago!
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The Palace Staircase
We discover how the Romans always loved “circenses” and celebrations. And also, that already at the beginning of the 19th century, Rome attracted many visitors from abroad. And so, beside Canova’s sculptors and Ipolitto Caffi’s landscapes, there is a delicious portrait of a little girl, miss Catherine Bishop, of Joshua Reynolds.

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Catherine Bishop, - Joshua Reynolds
And that is not all you can find at the Palazzo Braschi in these days.  On the first floor, there is an exhibition opened until the 7 of May: “Artemisia Gentileschi e il suo tempo”, “Artemisia and her time”, that of the great Caravaggio to whom Artemisia, a woman painter (a rarity in that time!), is often compared. 
 
Piazza di San Pantaleo
Opened every day except Monday from 10h to 19h.
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Giaele e Sisara - Artemisia Gentileschi
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