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Hidden behind the famous stairway of Piazza di Spagna, there is a small street where the city noise disappears and the flowers scent fulfill your nostrils, where local artisans are mixed with chic boutiques, art galleries and lively restaurants to relive the years of the Dolce Vita. All this and more is via Margutta.

Located in Campo Marzio, called the “the foreigners’ district” by Fellini, it was once a street full of stables for the palaces in the vicinity. In the Middle Ages, an unknown craftsman opened the first workshop, it was gradually emerging a booming industry, attracting artists from around the world. In 1855, commissioned by the Marchese Francesco Patrizi, a palace was erected at number 54, which was equipped with studios for artists to live and work in them. Some of its illustrious guest were: Picasso, Stravinsky and Puccini.

In 1953, the seventh art made it tremendously popular, as the acclaimed film “Roman Holiday” was filmed on it. The character Gregory Peck (played by Joe Bradley) had his apartment here. The street became an exclusive area where celebrities like Truman Capote, Federico Fellini and his great love, actress Giulietta Masina live, ranked No. 110, which may be a humorous plaque with their names.

That same year, the exhibition “Cento Pintori via Margutta” (one hundred Margutta street painters) was born, an initiative of some painters who wanted to bring life to a street that had always been natural refuge for artists. It’s an outdoor exhibition, open to everyone, which presents more than 1000 pieces of national and foreign authors carefully selected. It is distinguished by an outlet for new artists and is a great opportunity for art lovers. Since then, takes place once a year in late October.

Walking across the little buildings full of ivy, you can find the Fontana delle Arti (Fountain of the arts), a unique marble fountain designed by the architects Pietro Lombardi in 1927. It is a triangular base topped by a bucket of brushes with two masks in homage to the artists who frequented the area in the seventeenth century. The masks, one sad and one happy, make reference to the fluctuating mood of the artists.

Among the local businesses in this small paradise in the center of Rome, stand out a handmade leather shop, whose prices are high, but it is also the quality of its products, a furniture store with decorative articles of the 20′s, and a Gianni Bulgari- jewelry store with unique pieces. There is also an ancient marble craft business. Its plates can be purchased already made or ask to chisel out the text you want. The friendly owner normally offers a plate of pasta to customers.

If you want to extend your walk, you can get close to the renowned Spanish Steps. At your feet, you can enjoy the Fontana delle Barcaccia, a striking 1627 sculpture. Climbing the stairway, you will find the church of Trinita dei Monti, a Gothic jewel whose frescoes are worth visiting.

Image by Lalupa (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.

Elena Alvarez

Booking now one of our apartments in Rome and discovering the delights of this fascinating area away from the chaos of the eternal city by yourself, it will not be a disappointment.

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Translated by: Hans
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“Rome” is one of Federico Fellini’s most experimental and enigmatic films. It came out for the first time in 1972, and has become known as a poetic, semi-autobiographical film, as it shows symbolically, the path which Fellini takes, from his birth village of Rimini, towards Rome when he was still very young. The film is structured around a series of episodes which appear to be totally disconnected from one another – which move about not according to the narration, but rather for the symbolism of each passing image.

These are images which stand out not for what they say, but their visual power, and their connotations to one another. There is no one single protagonist – apart from the city of Rome itself, and all of its many changing facets and faces throughout its history – the magic and poetic potential which resounds through the ancient city, which sometimes seems like the center of the world.

The structure of the film is a very fragmented writing, where the presence of each character is emblematic, and remains in the mind’s eye for a long time afterwards. Perhaps one of the most beautiful images is the one with the white horse walking through traffic, amongst all the cars which pass slowly in a traffic jam, all under a grey, dull sky. The horse gallops amongst the cars, as though trying to distinguish between the past and present, glory and decadence. In the same way, Fellini constantly draws contrasts between the life during the Fascist war in Italy, with his own counterpart in the 70s – thus demonstrating the radical change in culture. Some of the war scenes show neighbours meeting up in public spaces round the city – restaurants, refuges, performances, which is then contrasted with the hippie counter-culture. Perhaps also, one of the most symbolic scenes is the juxtaposition of groups of prostitutes in brothels, with a fictitious catwalk with a great spectacle of fashion, watched over by a religious audience.

This film is undoubtedly, a clear example of how poetic devices can be used in a film, whilst also functioning as a philosophical questioning of society, full of ambiguities, and succeeding in illustrating the great changes and social processes which a city so steeped in ancient history as Rome has undergone over the years. As with his other films, Fellini aims to capture the “Italian spirit” as he imagines it; voluptuous, exaggerated, full of flamboyant colour and volume, decadence, vulgarity, frivolity, beauty, glory, sensuality, sexuality, modernity and history. This film is definitely a piece which will charm the watcher time and time again – not only does it study the remains of the Roman cultures, but it gives a number of contemporary social portraits too – of communities, subcultures which are constantly changing and transforming within the same place. If you’re thinking of going to Rome, were already curious about the city, the Rome of Fellini cannot fail to capture your desires and intrigue for the Italian capital.

Alexa Ray

Find apartments in Rome and discover the place where Federico Fellini, genius of 20th century cinema, made one of the best pieces of film of all time.

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Translated by: Poppy
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Despite the fact that there are at least a dozen texts directly or indirectly referring to the phenomenon, there is yet to be one definitive book covering the recurring motif of the Roman Trevi Fountain (Piazza di Trevi). Perhaps the one person closest to the study of the appearance of the bridge in dreams would be Federico Fellini, with the unforgettable scene from his film La Dolce Vita.

After a surreal party, journalist Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) wanders the streets of Rome, in pursuit of a statuesque American actress called Silvia, played by Anita Ekberg. The interaction between the two goes beyond speech, and language – which is probably at the root of the powerful attraction blinding Marcello, an aspiring writer struggling with words, and the world they represent. The encounter with Silvia takes Marcello beyond his limited and troubled world into one of new sensation, culture, and possibility, as he weaves his way through the Roman streets, to the distant sounds of cars, and the mewing of a kitten – as it becomes a matter of life and death that Silvia finds something to eat. This sense of new feeling, sensation, a new vision of the world and its symbols is encapsulated in the beautiful curves of Ekberg.

Silvia’s wondrous hair cascades along with the water in the fountain as she invites Marcello to bathe with her. The fountain – 26m by 20m, designed by Nicola Salvi in the 18th century – is like some kind of baroque aquatic theatre on which the young writer experiences a moment which will change his life forever.

The scene had already been foreshadowed a few hours earlier in the day, at the top of a tower – after having also followed Silvia up the steep, narrow staircase of the Vatican bell tower, an unexpected gust of wind knocks off her hat, letting free for the first time that famous, mysterious hair. The moment is like a pagan epiphany of her unparalleled, mystical, terrifying, incomprehensible beauty.

Paul Oilzum

The odd thing is that a very similar image has appeared in men’s dreams since the completion of the bridge in 1762; feminine treasures and trees filled with water. Don’t forget to pay it a visit when you rent apartments in Rome

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Translated by: Poppy
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One of the most dramatic scenes filmed by Federico Fellini  appears in the 1972 film Roma. In it, we witness the frustration of some municipal workers working on extending a subway line. It is hard to imagine anything more abysmal than trying to build a subway system in the city of Rome. Instead of moving in space, the workers seem to go back in time. There are so many layers and folds of the city one can not stop tripping over archaeological remains, paralyzing progress on the project. This explains why the subway in Rome, despite being one of the oldest in Europe, has so few lines and is so poorly developed.

The team of workers from the Fellini film can’t advance their engineering work because they find something that prevents it. Nothing less than a Roman villa from imperial times. In it they find a series of mosaics and paintings. One of the men depicted in them bears a more sinister resemblance to one of the workers, gazing back.

Something similar happened during construction of the Parco della Musica (Via P de Coubertin, 15) in 1995. Workers discovered an oil press and a Roman villa from the sixth century BC that delayed work for more than a year, and which were finally incorporated into the complex with a small building that now houses museum dedicated to these remains.

This anecdote serves to illustrate how difficult it is to engineer large modern architecture projects in the capital of Italy. The weight of history is so unusually large that it costs a fortune to construct buildings that dare to live up to its incomparable past. The Parco Della Musica contains the headquarters and the auditorium of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, founded in 1585, which is one of the oldest musical institutions and prestigious in the world. However, this magnificent architectural work by Renzo Piano,  famous for other contemporary landmarks like the  Pompidou in Paris (in collaboration with Richard Rogers), Kansai Airport (Osaka, Japan) or Jean-Marie Cultural Centre Tjibaou in Noumea (New Caledonia)-shows that the commitment is possible and that Rome may still, even in the 21^st century be in the forefront of the architectural vanguard.

Piano designed as the three main halls of the park, leaving in the middle an open-air auditorium. Surrounded by a lush Mediterranean garden with a preponderance of olive trees, the walls offer a combination of glass and red brick that allows one to discern the remains of a Roman villa.

Paul Oilzum

Why not enjoy some music with your architectural sight-seeing when you are in Rome? Do as the Romans, and rent apartments in Rome

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Translated by: salome antigone
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Rimini Federico Fellini was born on January 20, 1920 and since childhood he had a special liking for stories and drawing in motion, and above all caricatures.

In 1936, as a teenager involved in a National Fascist Party camp held in Verruchio he drew his first cartoons, later published in The National Opera Diana Balilla of Rimini with the title “1936 campers”. During that time Fellini began to write scripts for the Flash Gordon series.

In 1944, following the liberation of Rome, his love of images led him to open a shop selling portraits and caricatures in Rome. That same year he worked on the screenplay for the film Rome: Open City, directed by Roberto Rossellini, which showed how the Nazi regime affected society.

The film was shot in urban areas and faithfully mirrors reality. Anna Magnani, one of the most extraordinary Italian actresses of all time, plays one of the most famous scenes of the Italian cinema. It was the beginning of Italian neorealism, which was steeped in a critical view of a society that had collaborated with fascism and began to reflect a U.S. flavoured modernity in Europe.

On October 30, 1943, he married his muse, Giulietta Masina, who would star in many of his films.

During his neorealistic phase Fellini worked from scripts, but his film work is also heavily influenced by surrealism and symbolism, evidence of his satirical roots. Unlike in neorealism, Fellini’s characters are exaggerated and move in a dreamlike symbolism which belies traces of critical humour.

One of his most interesting films is the la Dolce Vita, filmed in 1960. It takes a harsh view of the madness, snobbery and nonsense of the hedonistic Roman upper-classes, as cynically observed by a mediocre reporter who dreams of becoming a member of the upper classes. Anita Ekberg appears in one of the most famous movie scenes which takes place by the Fontana di Trevi, which represents the emptiness and superficiality of the café society by depicting their escape from it into the night.

La Dolce Vita shows Rome in all its splendour, and masterfully zeroes in on the contradictions of post-war Rome. Fellini introduces us to the chaotic world of narrow city streets which contrast with the sterile vacuum of modern construction that foreshadows the world to come.

To retrace the steps of these great actors and celebrate the magic of cinema, it’s as easy as renting apartments in Rome and visiting the Trevi Fountain. Pay homage to one of the universal masters of cinema and one of the scenes that no doubt has given lent its silver glow to city’s identity.