Cinecittà

This guide to Cinecitta in Rome opens with Mussolini's 1937 studio built to out-glamour Hollywood with fascist epics, and traces what actually happened on these soundstages instead, through the war years and their aftermath. It follows the studio's postwar reinvention when American productions arrived, including Ben-Hur and Cleopatra, and the famous off-screen romance that grew up alongside the Cleopatra shoot. It also follows Federico Fellini, who kept a permanent office here for decades and built entire Roman streets inside these walls rather than filming the real thing.