Hotel Villa d’Este

The most cinematographic

A journey through fascinating facts for film history enthusiasts, presented in the order in which they were discovered. Some of the earliest outdoor film shots were shot at the Excelsior Palace Hotel in Rapallo for the film *Battesimo di nave* (1914), starring and directed by Gian Paolo Rosmino, a historic figure in Italian cinema. At the Caffè Ristorante La Loggia in Florence, in the summer of 1916, Arnoldo Ginna set the scene of the elderly gentleman being accosted by young Futurists (to symbolize the contrast between the traditionalist world and the dynamism of the new culture) in the now-untraceable film “Vita futurista,” conceived, among others, by the father of Futurism, Marinetti, and the painter Balla…

The most scoop-prone

The most scoop-prone

The Grand Hotel Villa d’Este in Cernobbio, in the province of Como, where photojournalist Fedele Toscani (Oliviero’s father), in 1933, through shrewd and patient stakeouts, managed to photograph the idyll between Bessie Wallis Warfield—better known as Wallis Simpson—and Edward VIII, who would soon abdicate the throne of England in order to marry her.