Over the years, the green hills, lush countryside and enchanting rivers and lakes of Umbria have provided the perfect locations for films, videos, documentaries and TV series. We propose an itinerary to the locations of the Umbrian "dream factory", discovering the Orvieto and Amerino areas as seen through the movie camera.
Stop for a break along the road to Orvieto, in the area surrounding the Lake of Corbara: some of the scenes of Barabba (Barabbas) by Richard Fleischer, with Antony Quinn and Vittorio Gassmann were filmed on its green shores. Before being dazzled by the sight of Orvieto and of its Duomo of incomparable beauty, head towards Melezzole, a characteristic village which was recently beautifully restored and appears to turn in upon itself, and is located on the slopes of Monte Croce di Serra.
The reason for stopping at Melezzole is a film by Giuseppe Tornatore, Una pura formalità (A pure formality) from 1993, with Gerard Depardieu, Roman Polanski and Sergio Rubini, which was partly filmed within the village walls.
Reach beautiful Orvieto, where the first film of Umbria was made, a short documentary from 1898, called Corpus Christi. The documentary shows a procession, in which you can clearly see the streets of the city centre that you'll walk along.
It was in 1973, when Gianni Amelio was taking his first steps in the world of directing that he chose the enchanting churches of Orvieto as the setting for one of his first experimental films produced for RAI: La città del Sole (The city of the Sun).
La casa Bruciata, by Massimo Sanno with Giulio Scarpati and Ornella Muti and the television series Il bello delle Donne were also filmed in Orvieto in 1998.
Leaving Orvieto, head west, going into the heart of the area around Amelia. Passing over hills and through small valleys you'll come across villages of historical importance like Guardea, Lugnano in Teverina, Amelia and Giove. Stop in Guardea where the ancient cemetery, today an English landscape garden, was used, together with Piazza Panfili, as a backdrop to the film Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man) by Michele Soavi (1994) with Rupert Everett and Anna Falchi.
Continue your journey towards Lugnano in Teverina, where the beautiful façades of the Collegiate church of Santa Maria Assunta and of Palazzo Pennone were used in the film Compagna di Viaggio (Travelling companion), by Peter del Monte with Michel Piccoli and Asia Argento.
Conclude this day entirely dedicated to film locations by heading towards Spoleto: "How is Spoleto?" - asks Fabio, the main character, played by Marcello Mastroianni, of Vita Privata by Louis Malle - "It's beautiful, on a hill, every year there are many shows and Spoleto fills up with Americans, young people and noblewomen".
In fact, the whole second part of Louis Malle's film (1961), in which Brigitte Bardot stars together with Mastroianni, was shot in the city of the Two Worlds Festival.
More recently, Spoleto has been the main location for Copperman, a film by Eros Puglielli with Luca Argentero.
The filming took place in the historic centre of Spoleto, with the alleys of Corso Garibaldi and the Ponzianina bridge, Piazza Mentana and Via San Carlo, and also in other areas of Umbria such as Castelluccio, Piediluco and Sant'Anatolia di Narco.
Umbria… Action!
