Where it was filmed 'Nostalghia'

Shot in Lazio, Umbria and Tuscany, Nostalghia features memorable landscapes in the south of Tuscany and in the areas of Sabina and Tuscia. In one of the initial sequences of the film, Eugenia (Andrej Gorcakov’s translator) walks into the 13^th century crypt of the Church of St. Peter in Tuscania (VT) where she watches a procession carrying a statue of the Madonna. The film suggests that the church houses Piero della Francesca’s masterpiece, the Madonna del Parto, which is actually in a museum in Monterchi (AR).

The director shot the sequences from his lead character’s childhood in his family village, not in Russia, but in the Umbrian countryside: the river wreathed in mist in a small valley is a branch of the Tiber River, situated near the Archaeological Park of Otriculum in Otricoli (TR).

A significant part of the film is set in Bagno Vignoni, a borgo in Val d’Orcia (SI) which has a pool of thermal waters in the central piazza delle Sorgenti. Here Andrej meets the “fool”, Domenico, and later carries out his bidding at the end of the film. The farmhouse where he lives, which in the film appears to be part of the village borgo, is actually the Badia di Santa Maria della Gloria, an ancient monastery near Anagni (FR). However, the exterior of the house, seen in the sequence when the child runs away as the family is liberated, is piazza della Collegiata in Faleria (VT). The medieval borgo that towers above the mist in the distance is Calcata (VT).

After an argument with Eugenia, Andrej wanders alone into a picturesque, crumbling church partially submerged in water where he talks with a small girl. This is San Vittorino, the “sinking church”, in the hamlet of the same name in Cittaducale (RI). Here he falls asleep, dreaming that he is in the roofless Abbey of San Galgano in Chiusdino (SI).

The film also features a range of locations in the city of Rome. In vicolo della Campanella, in the historical centre of Rome, Andrej dreams that he is in an alley standing by an abandoned piece of furniture, he looks into the mirror and sees Domenico. Andrej stays in a building in via dei Condotti. Domenico organizes the staging of many mental health patients, positioned like statues on the staircase that leads to the Protomoteca in piazza del Campidoglio, where, after a fervent speech from atop the horse statue, he immolates himself.