Many are the Roman locations referenced in the history of Italian cinema, but perhaps the most representative episode starring a Capitoline monument is Anita Ekberg’s bath in the Trevi Fountain. It is difficult to find another film in which actor and character identified so completely and unavoidably. In La dolce vita Anita is Sylvia, an American diva who – in the period in which Rome was at the crest of the Hollywood wave – came to Rome to act in a movie. Shining, statuesque, irresistible, but almost unconscious of her attractiveness, Sylvia – just like Anita – became the sex symbol of an unrepeatable era. Sylvia was at the same time enticing and innocent, as depicted in another memorable scene of Fellini’s movie, when – guided by Marcello Mastroianni – she walks up Saint Peter’s dome dressed in priestly robes.
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