Rome has often been described as an open-air museum but its picturesque majesty and theatricality also lend themselves to providing an excellent film set. Be it ancient Roman splendour, baroque decadence or neo-realistic squalor, its appearance, unchanged through the ages, makes it a natural choice for films set in every era. And the constant slew of movie location trucks occupying whole stretches of pavements in the capital confirms this.

Of course, the films that immediately spring to mind are La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960), with a voluptuous Anita Ekberg splashing about in the Trevi fountain, or Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953) in which a secluded princess, in the shape of Audrey Hepburn, escapes her bodyguards to embark on an adventure in the Italian capital in the company of an American news hound, Gregory Peck. But let