Rome's Cinecitta' Studios - once known as Hollywood on the Tiber in its heyday - marked its 70th birthday on Friday with a gala event led by legendary diva Sofia Loren.
Fittingly, the star-studded birthday party was hosted on the sets of Ancient Rome, created for the eponymous TV series produced by the American network HBO and Italy's RAIFiction.
Many of the worlds created at the Cinecitta' have become part of film-making history since the Studios opened its doors in 1937.
Oscar-winning director Federico Fellini, for whom Cinecitta' was a second home, said the Studios represented his "ideal world, the cosmic space before the Big Bang".
Cinecitta largely owes its success to its legendary craftsmen, who earned a world-wide reputation in the 1950s, with their meticulous re-creating of ancient Rome for Mervyn LeRoy's Quo Vadis and William Wyler's Ben Hur.
In more recent times, this reputation has been cemented by films like Martin Scorsese's 19th century epic, Gangs of New York.
Mel Gibson also chose Cinecitta' to film part of The Passion of the Christ and Terry Gilliam came here to re-create the fantasy world for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
After the Second World War, when the Studios re-opened, their world-class facilities were a magnet for Italian directors.
From the early 1950s they were joined by many American filmmakers, attracted by the Studios reputation for creative and technical talent and Italy's low production costs.
The next 15 years saw cinema history made here: from Cleopatra and The Quiet American by Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Helen of Troy by Robert Wise, War and Peace by King Vidor and Roman Holiday by William Wyler, starring Audrey Hepburn in her Ocar-winning performance as an incognito princess escorted for a day in Rome by journalist Gregory Peck.
A total of 48 films partially or wholly shot here have received Academy Awards, with 83 nominations overall. Many were collected by Fellini, who shot virtually all his productions on the lot, including La Dolce Vita, Satyricon and Amarcord.
Other renowned Italian directors like Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, Ettore Scola, Franco Zeffirelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Vittorio De Sica also filmed here, alongside Sergio Leone who came to Cinecitta' to make 'spaghetti westerns' like For a Few Dollars More and Once Upon a Time in the West.
Facilities and equipment were updated in the 1980s, along with the creation of a new Cinecitta' Digital centre. Television shows and commercials entered alongside film production and then in the 1990s, the operation was turned from a public institution into a private company owned by eight partners (Cinecitta' Holding, Aurelio De Laurentiis, Vittorio Merloni, Diego della Valle, Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Robert Haggiag, EfiBanca and the Istituto Luce).
Cinecitta' currently boasts four production centres, more than 30 sound stages - including the famous Teatro 5, Europe's largest, so beloved by Fellini - an outdoor tank of almost 70,000 sq feet, a 25-acre back lot, carpentry and set production departments, a digital centre, post production facilities, film processing workshops, edit suites, 280 dressing rooms/offices, 21 make-up rooms, 82 prop warehouses the list is almost endless.
Its artisans are being celebrated with the creation of a new Cinecitta' Prize for its 70th anniversary. Awards will be made in the categories of costumes, set design, special effects, make-up and hair, production organisation and sound technician, with prizes given out at the Venice Film Festival in September.
In the meantime, filming continues at Cinecitta'. After making the recent Go Go Tales (being shown at the 60th Cannes Film Festival), the American director now living in Rome, Abel Ferrara told ANSA: "The history of the cinema is there at Cinecitta', you'd have to be a mummy not to feel those ghosts of the past. This is a place where they make great films and they respect the filmmaker".
