Where it was filmed 'The Best Years'

With a soundtrack curated by Nicola Piovani, Gli anni più belli, Gabriele Muccino’s homage to Ettore Scola’s We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974), recounts 40 years in the lives of his four protagonists – Giulio, Gemma, Paolo, Riccardo – with historical events that changed the world and Italy in the background: the fall of the Berlin wall, the Mani Pulite investigations and the end of the first Republic, September 11^th.

A large part of the film was shot in Rome. Paolo and Gemma meet and fall in love as kids: she lives in piazzetta Monte de’ Cenci, but is forced to move to Naples, growing up too fast and hanging out with the wrong crowd: salita Pontecorvo is the location for the Church of the Complex di San Francesco delle Cappuccinelle where she is complimented by some of her peers and in salita Tarsia, boys try to teach her the local dialect.

Gemma (Micaela Ramazzotti) and Paolo (Kim Rossi Stuart) meet years later in via dei Pettinari. She realises she has never forgotten him and leaves Naples and her boyfriend Nunzio (Gennaro Apicella) to return to Rome: she is complimented by boys riding vespas in piazza di Porta Maggiore, answering back quickly this time. She meets Paolo in piazza della Repubblica in front of the Fountain of the Naiads.

Paolo is a docent on a short-term contract: the scene where Giulio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Gemma tell him about their betrayal was shot in largo Angelicum, outside the San Tommaso d'Aquino Pontifical University, which acts as a school in the film. Paolo watches a show with Gemma’s son, Leonardo, at the Teatro Flavio Vespasiano in Rieti, which serves as Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera.

Giulio is a lawyer who, after years defending people who could not pay him, agrees to work in a prestigious law firm, changing his life and putting his ideals aside. The law firm offices are in Palazzo Besso in largo delle Stimmate, behind Largo Argentina.

Riccardo (Claudio Santamaria) dreams of becoming an actor: on the set of Ancient Rome in Cinecittà Studios, he meets Anna (Emma Marrone), whom he marries at the early Christian Church of St. Eusebius in Ronciglione (province of Viterbo) promising to never leave her. When the “Movimento del Cambiamento” begins to shake the political system that has governed Italy in the early 2000s, he decides to join in and holds a rally in piazza Sant’Eurosia. Later he meditates on the staircase of via Giovanni da Montecorvino in the Garbatella neighbourhood, several hundred metres from the rally location. Not far off is via delle Sette Chiese, the location for a scene set in Naples where Nunzio, accompanied by Gemma, deals drugs.

Life pulls the four protagonists apart and brings them back together over and again. One night Riccardo and Paolo meet Gemma in via di Sant’Angelo in Pescheria, not far from piazza Mattei, and, wandering the alleys of Rome’s historical centre, reach a deserted Trevi fountain where they decide to “recreate” an iconic scene in Italian cinema, also evoked by Scola in his We All Loved Each Other So Much: the fountain swim of Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in La Dolce vita (1960).

Riccardo and Giulio meet after years at Termini Station and say goodbye in via Marsala, promising to see each other again although they have now grown too far apart to really believe it. Years do pass before Riccardo, Giulio and Paolo manage to meet up and spend a happy evening together, one that starts in a restaurant in piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, continues in piazza delle Cinque Scole, where they pass by the fountain del Pianto, and ends close by in Paolo’s house in via di Santa Maria de' Calderari, on the edge of the Roman Ghetto.

The finale features Ponte Sisto, which a young, still idealistic Giulio crossed (towards piazza Trilussa) with Margherita (Nicoletta Romanoff), just before deciding to marry her with a sumptuous reception at villa Polissena in via Mafalda di Savoia. This time, almost as if closing a circle, the couple crossing the bridge are the children of Giulio and Gemma.