Rome is the kind of place that turns travelers into pilgrims. Most head to the Vatican. I grabbed a taxi and took off for the backlot of Cinecitta, Italy's legendary movie studio.

Perhaps it was seeing Anita Ekberg dancing in the Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita one too many times that hooked me on Italian cinema. Fellini, Rosellini, Mussolini.

Well, sometimes even dictators get it right. Mussolini established the studio in 1937 as a vehicle for his military and political propaganda. "Cinema is our most important weapon," he once said. But less than a decade later, both Fascism and Mussolini were dead and Cinecitta was thriving. The studio would go on to introduce the world to the likes of Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Marcello Mastroianni who remembered walking through the studio's gates for the first time at age 11. He was an extra and thrilled by the idea of getting paid to play.

And so it was with the uncanny timing of a contrived movie script I landed in Rome the same day Cinecitta opened its gates to the public for the summer season.

Cinecitta is no Hollywood theme park. But not for lack of trying. Sandwiched between the life-sized sets of Venice and New York were food courts. I ate at a cafe outside of ancient Rome, served by toga-clad centurions. There was a pavilion selling T-shirts and clapboards and Italian
movie posters. Others hawked cell phones and motorcycles.

But I had come for history, not hype. I was drawn to the aged and weathered props from Ben Hur and Cleopatra, two of the studio's big-budget international co-productions. They were set back in the park, away from the Bossanova Cafe and Red Rock Saloon where most of the other people congregated that night. Surrounded by summer stillness and framed by a full moon, these props were vestiges of another era. In the 1950s and '60s, Cincetta's glamorous screen depictions of the Eternal City made Rome the place to be seen. Celebrities like Liz and Dick answered the call by showing up for cocktails in cafes on the Via Veneto, the city's most fashionable boulevard.

I couldn't help feeling that Italian cinema is best when it's trying to imitate Hollywood least. The Bicycle Thief, 8 ?, Divorce Italian Style, Cinema Paradiso. These were the reasons I'd come to Cinecitta to pay tribute. And the irony of the studio's most successful theatrical export wasn't lost on me that evening: La Vita 'e Bella, Life is Beautiful. How far this great movie-making machine had come from Mussolini's grand vision.

Before I left, I stopped by the replica of the Trevi Fountain and thought about Anita Ekberg. Though Federico Fellini shot much of La Dolce Vita on Cinecitta sets, the famous fountain scene was actually filmed on location on three frigid January nights. It took several nips of cognac to get Ekberg and her co-star Marcello Mastroianni through the scene.

I grabbed a taxi back to the heart of Rome. There was still time for a nightcap on the Via Veneto. Cognac, of course.

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