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Abandoned castle in la dolce vita4/8/2023 ![]() ![]() “It is shameful that Via Veneto, which is famous around the world, has been left in such a state of abandonment,” said Pietro Lepore, the owner of Harry’s Bar, in interview with the Telegraph in 2017. ![]() Indeed, the only busy establishment on Via Veneto was the Hard Rock Café. The stylish, once so evident, are conspicuous only by their absence: the only person I saw with any personal flair was a high-class woman of abilities decked out in Prada exiting a five-star hotel. As is the Via Veneto, which, like London’s King’s Road, seems now terribly sad having lost its sparkle, rather like a faded actress whose fans have moved on to someone else. Today Harry’s, although the drinks are great, is a shadow of its former self. Brando also loved the place, as did, Burton, Taylor and Ava Gardner, while Rino Barillari – “The “King Of Paparazzi” – was forever lurking, ready to pounce on drunken celebrities. Fellini’s star Ekberg was a constant at Harry’s, as was Orson Welles Sinatra played the piano there. The place to hang in the 1950s and 1960s, myriad filmmakers and actors flooded the city – then known as “Hollywood on the Tiber” – to work in its film studio Cinecittà, built by Mussolini on the outskirts of Rome in 1933. My first port of call in search of La Dolce Vita was the celebrated Harry’s Bar on Via Venito. On its surface, the city, as if preserved in aspic, hasn’t changed much at all: there are majestic buildings at every turn, while traffic makes no sense whatsoever. The latter, created in 1950, hasn’t changed since its futurist frieze by Hungarian sculptor/actor Amerigo Tot (who played Michael Corleone’s older bodyguard in The Godfather Part II), forever resplendent atop its entrance, as it was when I first arrived here in 1990. I’d elected to stay at a the rather splendid Palazzo Montemartini hotel: a fine example of true Roman elegance that stands between Michelangelo’s Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli and Roma Termini railway station. A fuss today, forgotten a few days later, Fellini’s choice of moniker for his smudger is inspired. The surname Paparazzo hails from Italian word pappataci, which describes many a flying, biting, blood-sucking silent dipteran and differentiates them from the noisy, blood-feeding mosquitoes. Beside him is his faithful photographer, Paparazzo, whose name has since been purloined in the plural to describe any and all celeb photographers. This is where the film’s famous Swedish-American Sylvia (played by the outrageously curvaceous Anita Ekberg) alights only to be met by howling hordes of journalists including Marcello. To whit, I travelled to Rome in search of “the sweetness of life” and flew into Ciampino airport. ![]() ![]() Today, flights to Rome are affordable, so, rather than the trip of a lifetime, a visit to the Eternal City is now within reach for most. Italianate became an adjective.īut that was then and this is now. And if you couldn’t afford the costly trip you drove a Lambretta or a Vespa, wore sunglasses at night, drank cappuccinos and hung out on the street even though it was often pouring with rain. Accordingly, Rome became the desired destination. ![]()
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