Fellini, Visconti, Loren, Heston, Hepburn, Peck, Taylor, Burton … a dream dinner party of talent graced the grounds of Rome’s renowned Cinecittà film studios during the so-called “Hollywood on the Tiber” period — named after the river that runs through the Italian capital.

From the epic Quo Vadis in 1951 right through to Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther in 1963, the city was burning with big film-production energy. Hollywood studios clamored to record runaway English-language projects there, lapping up the local subsidies, lower costs and unfrozen international funds; peaking with Cleopatra in 1963 — at that time the most expensive title ever made.