In 1954 the - now perhaps rather corny - film Three Coins in the Fountain revealed the urban splendour of Rome to a still shell-shocked world.
Baroque façades shimmered in chiaroscuro sunlight; flights of staircases rushed to distant obelisks. The fabled fountains leapt and fell from sumptuous heights.
That these location sequences were in fact shot a mere nine years after Monte Cassino and the Allies’ liberation of the capital from Nazi occupation is incomprehensible.
A year later came the heaviest snowfall of the century… ‘Roma era tutta Candida, tutta pulita e lucida’, as Mia Martini sang. The snow layered the cities’ seven hills in deep, glistening white. Just as interwar Paris was the lure for Hemingway and the F Scott Fitzgeralds, these romantic images allured American literati, primarily young and recently released…
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The Oldie (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2022