Cinecittà Studios Open in Rome

On 28 April 1937, Benito Mussolini inaugurated Cinecittà on the outskirts of Rome. Encompassing forty hectares, the complex was designed to revive an Italian film sector that had slumped to a low point earlier in the decade, while also challenging the global dominance of Hollywood. Established alongside his son Vittorio and cinema administrator Luigi Freddi, the project operated under the slogan that cinema was the state's most powerful weapon. Its modern sound stages and post-production facilities immediately handled ambitious domestic features, including the 1937 epic Scipio Africanus, which employed thousands of extras and live elephants for its historical battle sequences.

The facilities faced severe disruption as the Second World War engulfed Europe. German forces converted Cinecittà into a military barracks, stripping out its electrical gear and gutting the sound stages. Subsequent Allied aerial bombardments of Rome caused substantial damage to the sprawling complex. Following these destructions, the property transitioned entirely away from filmmaking between 1944 and 1950, when it functioned as an administrative center and refugee facility for displaced persons. People of some thirty nationalities found shelter there, including Poles, Russians, Iranians, Chinese, Roma and Jewish survivors of Nazi camps, alongside Italians displaced by the war.