The Most Beautiful Film Locations in Lazio
5 places · updated 5 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful film locations in Lazio are Colosseum, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and Trevi Fountain. The list covers 5 film locations. Last updated 5 October 2026.
Rome has been a film city since 1937, when the Cinecittà studios opened on its outskirts, and the city itself has been a set for even longer. In the 1950s Hollywood came to Rome to shoot epics in the studios and romances in the streets, and Italian directors from Rossellini to Fellini filmed the capital as it was. Two thousand years of continuous building mean that a single camera position can take in Roman ruins, Baroque churches and everyday traffic.
The Trevi Fountain, Nicola Salvi's eighteenth-century Baroque monument, is where Anita Ekberg waded at night in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. The Spanish Steps, built in the 1720s to climb towards Trinità dei Monti, are where Audrey Hepburn ate gelato in Roman Holiday, which also passes the Colosseum, the great amphitheatre opened under the Flavian emperors in AD 80.
Other locations reward a closer look. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane is Borromini's masterpiece, a church small enough to fit inside one of the piers of St Peter's, with an oval dome of interlocking coffers that seems to rise higher than it does. The Baths of Caracalla, completed in the early third century, still show the scale of Roman public bathing in walls that stand to a great height; since 1937 their ruins have also served as a summer stage for opera.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Colosseum | Archaeological site | |
| 2 | San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane | Church building | |
| 3 | Trevi Fountain | Sculpture | |
| 4 | Spanish Steps | Stairs | |
| 5 | Baths of Caracalla | Thermae |
01 Colosseum
Colosseo
Italy · 1.2 km from Rome41.890° N 12.492° E
Image by MARTINOPHUC from Pixabay The eighty-foot drop beneath the Colosseum's sand floor is where the real machinery of the show lived.
Did you know? Since 2000, Rome has lit the Colosseum in gold whenever a death sentence anywhere in the world is commuted.
02 San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Chiesa di San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Italy · 0.9 km from Rome41.902° N 12.491° E
Alexkom000 · CC BY 4.0 San Carlo is so small that it would get lost in most Roman churches: the whole building measures only about 20 by 12 metres. Yet into that cramped corner plot Francesco Borromini fitted one of the most inventive spaces of the Baroque, and it was his first independent commission.
Did you know? Romans call it San Carlino, and its whole floor area is often said to fit inside one of the four piers that carry the dome of St Peter's.
03 Trevi Fountain
Fontana di Trevi
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.901° N 12.483° E
Image by jdegheest from Pixabay What feeds this fountain isn't ornamental plumbing — it's the working outflow of the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct finished in 19 BC that has been delivering the same spring water to roughly this same spot for over two thousand years. The Roman legend behind the name says a young woman, a virgo, once led thirsty soldiers to the spring; whether or not that's true, the aqueduct itself is real and still functioning.
Did you know? About 26 metres high and 49 metres wide, the Trevi is often called the largest Baroque fountain in the world.
04 Spanish Steps
Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti
Italy · 0.9 km from Rome41.906° N 12.483° E
Image by Leonhard_Niederwimmer from Pixabay The Spanish Steps are Rome's great outdoor staircase, climbing a steep 29-metre slope from the Piazza di Spagna to the church of Trinità dei Monti on the shoulder of the Pincian Hill.
Did you know? Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck were filmed on the steps for Roman Holiday (1953), and they also appear in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).
05 Baths of Caracalla
Terme di Caracalla
Italy · 2.2 km from Rome41.880° N 12.493° E
Image by pcdazero from Pixabay Few ruins in Rome convey the scale of imperial ambition as bluntly as the Baths of Caracalla. Begun under Septimius Severus and inaugurated by his son Caracalla in AD 216, the complex occupied a walled rectangle of roughly 337 by 328 metres on the southern edge of the city, on land that had once been a garden estate.
Did you know? At least 252 columns stood in the complex; the eight giant columns of the frigidarium weighed close to 100 tonnes each.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful film locations in Lazio?
- On our list, Colosseum ranks first, followed by San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and Trevi Fountain.
- Where was La Dolce Vita's fountain scene filmed?
- Anita Ekberg's walk into the water in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) was filmed at the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
- Where was Roman Holiday filmed?
- Roman Holiday (1953) was shot on location in Rome, at sites including the Spanish Steps, the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain and the Mouth of Truth at Santa Maria in Cosmedin.
- What is Cinecittà?
- Cinecittà is a large film studio complex in Rome, opened in 1937. Productions such as Ben-Hur (1959) and many films by Federico Fellini were made there.
- How many film locations are on this list in Lazio?
- The list covers 5 film locations.