How to catch a film in the original language in Rome, where the summer screens go up, and the city's own star turns from La Dolce Vita to Cinecittà.
עודכן לאחרונה 23 באוגוסט 2026
In a nutshell: Rome is a film set as much as a city, and the locals are passionate cinemagoers. Most screenings are dubbed into Italian, but original-language shows do exist if you know where to look (the tag to hunt for is v.o.), and in summer the screens move outdoors into parks and piazzas. The famous moments live elsewhere in this guide: the Trevi Fountain scene in La Dolce Vita and the Cinecittà studios, while the Casa del Cinema screens films in Villa Borghese year-round.
Rome has long had a love affair with the cinema, and going to the movies here is a pleasure most visitors never plan for. This chapter covers how to watch a film in its original language, where the summer screens appear, and how to follow the city's own film history on the ground.
Most films in Rome are shown dubbed into Italian, so a screening in the original language is scarce but not impossible to come by. Cinemas that show films without dubbing mark them as v.o. (versione originale) in their listings, and the same tag appears next to English-language shows. For a list of what is screening in English, check RomeReview.com, which tracks original-version screenings across the city.
The most reliable theatre for English-language films is the Nuovo Olimpia, three blocks north of Piazza Colonna just off Via del Corso, at Via in Lucina 16 (+39 06 8880 2183). If it is not showing what you hoped for, the RomeReview.com listings will point you to whatever else is playing in the original version that week.
In summer, Rome's cinemas tend to go alfresco: big screens pop up in parks and piazzas across town between mid-June and mid-September. The films are usually dubbed, but the setting is the point, with screenings under the warm evening sky in some of the city's best-loved squares. Check listings guides and festival websites for programmes and ticketing details.
Film buffs should make for the Casa del Cinema in any season: it sits in Villa Borghese near Piazzale San Paolo del Brasile and runs a regular programme of film events, from retrospectives to talks. In summer its open-air screenings share the calendar with the other pop-up screens around town.
Rome's own filmography is a large part of its charm, and the most celebrated frame in the whole city is the Trevi Fountain scene in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), when Anita Ekberg's Sylvia splashes through the basin in her ball gown and beckons Marcello Mastroianni to follow. The fountain and its film pedigree are covered in the Tridente & Trevi chapter.
Behind the scenes, the engine of Roman cinema was Cinecittà, the studio complex that opened in 1937 and earned the nickname Hollywood on the Tiber in the 1950s, when American epics such as Cleopatra were shot there. Fellini made the studios his home and filmed La Dolce Vita in Theatre 5. The studios and their golden age are covered in the Southern Rome chapter.