“The Great Beauty”: Sorrentino and his Oscar-crowned vision of Rome

Directed and co-written by the acclaimed Neapolitan filmmaker, The Great Beauty is Paolo Sorrentino’s sixth feature and remains, to this day, one of his most iconic works.

Let’s explore the film’s stunning locations, which helped earn it the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2014.

What the film is about

It’s summer, and Rome glows with an intense, absolute beauty; dazzling, yet almost out of reach. The city appears both alluring and aloof, effortlessly offering itself to the awestruck gaze of tourists. Jep Gambardella, a 65-year-old journalist and acclaimed theatre critic, retains the refined charisma that time has barely touched. A man of understated charm, he spends his days drifting between parties and high-society gatherings, in a Rome caught between the splendour of its past and the decadence of its present.

Against the backdrop of a city steeped in grandeur, Jep observes a contemporary society marked by emptiness and frivolity. With a disillusioned eye, he lays bare the uneasy contrast between beauty and superficiality. He moves with ease among the cultural elite and the social whirl, in a capital that remains, eternally, a shrine to wonder, art and magnificence.

“La Grande Bellezza”: an Italian mirror to the world

Presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, La grande bellezza immediately made its mark among those films destined to become part of cinematic history. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, as well as the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and many other accolades, it bears all the hallmarks of a quintessential Sorrentino film.

Sorrentino frames Rome in all its elusive, timeless beauty, but from the perspective of an observer frozen between awe and disillusionment. Beauty and social decay appear as the two sides of the same coin: one radiant, the other crumbling, mirroring not only the city but, by extension, the country itself, reduced to historical grandeur and a fragile façade.

Whether admired or criticised, Sorrentino’s cinema always strives (consciously or otherwise) to uncover the right key to explore the human soul through narrative. His stories are often said to be closed or self-contained, yet their very nature tends to reach towards something far more expansive. To achieve this, he consistently draws on spaces (houses, locations, interiors) which, through his framing, become far more than just backdrops. They are integral to the journey, guiding the viewer toward the emotional and artistic destinations he seeks to reach.

Places as narrative settings

Paolo Sorrentino’s love letter to Rome is not conveyed through the city’s most iconic monuments, only briefly glimpsed in the background, but rather through its historic palazzi and the winding streets of the city centre, with particular attention to the unique character of its gardens. The city reveals itself to us at night, or at dawn, as Jep walks home from yet another hollow party of the Roman elite.

It is a beauty that stands in stark contrast to the vulgarity of the characters, who drift through the city like caricatures, unable to grasp its true essence; an essence that, by contrast, is not lost on the Japanese tourist who faints while admiring the view from the square in front of the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola (among the most beautiful fountains in Rome). At times resembling a sculpture, at others a painting, The Great Beauty becomes a manifesto for a society caught between the sublime spectacle of its surroundings and the existential void of its inhabitants.

Let us now take a closer look at the locations that served as the backdrop to this internationally acclaimed film: places that can still be visited today by those wishing to embark on a cinephile’s tour of the magical settings behind this now-iconic work of contemporary Italian cinema.

Jep Gambardella’s Home

Let’s begin with the protagonist’s home, Jep Gambardella. Sorrentino chooses to place it in the penthouse of a building at Piazza del Colosseo 9, overlooking the southern side of the Flavian Amphitheatre (the Colosseum), one of the most iconic monuments in the world, and, on the opposite side, the ruins of the Temple of Claudius on the Caelian Hill. It’s here that the scenes of Jep’s extravagant parties and jaded conversations with friends unfold.

As the film progresses, we follow Jep through some of Rome’s most enchanting and lesser-known corners. He appears on the Aventine Hill, near the Basilica of Santa Sabina and the Giardino degli Aranci, surrounded by contemplative silence and framed by vistas that inspire reflection. He’s later seen strolling along the banks of the Tiber, pausing for quiet moments of observation, captivated by the city’s unusual, poetic perspectives. One scene shows him walking down Via Veneto, now worn by time and touched by decline, its once-effervescent glamour faded. Today, it’s frequented mainly by wealthy tourists from China and the Arab world. Despite its loss of lustre since the days of La Dolce Vita, it still echoes with memories of its former grandeur, like a past that never entirely disappeared.

The other locations in The Great Beauty

In The Great Beauty, every location is chosen with meticulous care, both for exterior shots and for the private interiors that reflect each character’s inner world and the tension between splendour and decay. Orietta, one of the brief yet significant women in Jep’s life, resides in the prestigious Palazzo Pamphilj, overlooking Piazza Navona.

Viola’s home, by contrast, is set within the magnificent Palazzo Sacchetti on Via Giulia, a Renaissance masterpiece designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. One of the film’s most enigmatic sequences unfolds here: her son Andrea, entirely painted red, engages in a surreal dialogue with his mother while walking down a corridor adorned with ancient busts.

Through refined editing, the façade of Palazzo Sacchetti is seamlessly transformed on screen into the entrance of Palazzo Taverna, located near Piazza dell’Orologio. It’s within these rooms that one of the film’s most melancholic scenes takes place: the Colonna di Reggio family, once noble but now fallen, return from a soirée hosted by Jep, who has “hired” them to impress his guests. Left alone, the princess wanders through the rooms that were once her home, now turned into a museum, pausing in front of the cradle where she was born as the voiceover narration reveals fragments of her story.

One of the film’s most evocative moments is a nocturnal tour led by Stefano, Jep’s friend and a symbolic guardian of the city’s hidden wonders. Together with Ramona and Jep, he embarks on a remarkable journey that begins in the Capitoline Museums, where classical statues are bathed in an ethereal, soft light. The trio then continues to the Aventine Hill, arriving at the Priory of the Knights of Malta. Here, through the famous keyhole in the gate, a perfectly framed view of St Peter’s dome is revealed: a striking image, even though in reality, the gate cannot be opened to the public.

The journey moves on to the halls of Palazzo Barberini, where Raphael’s celebrated Portrait of a Young Woman emerges from the darkness beneath the flickering glow of a candelabra. From there, the route leads to the courtyard of Palazzo Spada, where the renowned forced perspective of its gallery (just eight metres long) creates the illusion of a much greater depth.

The itinerary ends in poetic fashion at dawn, in the gardens of Villa Medici, now home to the French Academy. As daylight breaks, Rome is returned to its eternal splendour.

Among the film’s most symbolic locations, the Parco degli Acquedotti holds a special place. Here, Jep observes, half amused, half detached, the radical performance of the artist Talia Concept, who hurls herself naked against the ancient stones of the Claudian Aqueduct. The scene captures the raw, aching collision between art and ruin.

Article translated by Agnese Giardini