In 1959, Rome was waiting for a miracle. The city’s body was full of scars. The war, with its fears, had certainly been left behind, but its foul stench was still lingering everywhere. Even on the skin. However, Rome had decided to be reborn, in one way or another; to make the world forget that it had been fascist.

1959 was a watershed year, between a past full of pain and a possible rebirth. In the city, there were building works all over to prepare for the 1960 Olympics, as Rome and the rest of Italy wanted to impress the world.

And then there was the Dolce Vita. This was not its name yet, Federico Fellini’s movie would only come out the following year, but a part of Rome had already become a theatre of excess and elegance, it was Hollywood-on-the-Tiber, after all, with its Gregory Pecks, Ava Gardners, the gossip stories that ended up regularly in the fashionable glossy magazines.