Movies set in Northern Italy
- Author & Photographer: Teri Didjurgis
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Movies featuring Northern Italy
Take a trip to Northern Italy through the movies!
Venice, Tuscany, Rome and the Amalfi Coast usually dominate the movies set in Italy. However the Italian towns of Milan and Genoa as well as the beautiful nature backdrops of Lake Como and the Dolomites have created magical films in the northern region of Italy. Romance is also celebrated in Verona as the capitol of love and home of Shakespeare’s Juliet in two movies.
Enjoy the beauty of Northern Italy as you travel through Renaissance era cities, take a boat ride on Lake Como or enter the snowy Dolomites for adventures in these movies.
Movies set inVenice
In The Tourist, during an impromptu trip to Europe to mend a broken heart, community college math teacher Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp) finds himself in an extraordinary situation when an alluring stranger, Elise (Angelina Jolie), places herself in his path on the train to Venice.
What Frank doesn’t know about Elise: Elise is the lover of Alexander Pearce, a man who owes millions in taxes to England and who stole billions of dollars from a vicious mobster named Shaw. Elise got a letter from Pearce with explicit instructions to flirt with a stranger on the train and let those pursuing him believe that the strange is, in fact, Pearce.
A seemingly innocent flirtation for Frank turns into a dangerous game of cat and mouse while various people try to capture the pair.
The scenery and costumes highlight the elegance of Venice.
Venice locations: Almost all of the movie takes place in Venice with views of the Grand Canal and the cityscape including Palazzo Pisani Moretta, Hotel Danieli, Peggy Gugenheim Museum, Rialto Market, Bibliotech Nazionale Marciana, Arsenale di Venezia and Scuola Grande di Santa Maria Della Misericordia (the Ball Feast scene).
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With a reputation for seducing members of the opposite sex, regardless of their marital status, a notorious womanizer Casanova (Heath Ledger) discovers a beauty who seems impervious to his charms. However, as he continues to pursue the indifferent lady, he finds himself falling in love.
The film is loosely based on the life of Giacomo Casanova and will take you back in time to Venice in the 1700s with colorful silk brocaded costumes and powdered wigs & masked balls.
Italy Location: Venice – quite impressive to film on location with boats, intermittently closing down the Grand Canal for shooting and having horses for key scenes.
- See more movies set in Venice
Movies set inVerona
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While visiting Verona, Italy, with her busy fiance, a young woman named Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) visits a wall where the heartbroken leaves notes to Shakespeare’s tragic heroine, Juliet Capulet.
Finding one such letter from 1957, Sophie decides to write to its now elderly author, Claire (Vanessa Redgrave). Inspired by Sophie’s actions, Claire sets out to find her long-lost lover, accompanied by her disapproving grandson (Christopher Egan) and Sophie.
Letters to Juliet is a formula romantic comedy and feel-good movie that will have you flying to Verona to write your own letter to Juliet. The courtyard exists at Casa di Giulietta or you can leave a note or become a secretary of Juliet.
Italy Locations: The film was primarily filmed in Verona, but also shows scenes around Tuscany – Siena, Montalcino, and Castelnuovo Berardenga
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The movie brings Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to film. The classic story of forbidden love between two rival families in historic Verona – the Montagues and the Capulets. Several films have been created telling this story in several locations around Italy, but the story is firmly tied to Verona.
Romeo and Juliet (1968): Much of the film was created in the Cinecittà Rome studios. The Capulet family mansion is Palazzo Borghese, Artena in Rome now used as the Spanish Embassy. Other scenes were filmed in the Tuscany town of Gubbrio and the Basilica of St Peter in Tuscania.
Romeo + Juliet (1996): with Leonardo DeCaprio – a more modern version but was not filmed in Italy.
Romeo and Juliet (2013): This version with Hailee Seinfeld came back to Italy and was filmed in grotto Sacro Speco in Subiaco, Mantua, Caprarola, Lazio, Verona and the Cinecittà Rome studios.
Movies set in Genoa
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In A Summer in Genoa, Joe is a widowed teacher bereft at the death of his wife Marianne in an accident caused by their youngest daughter Mary. Offered a teaching job in Italy, he takes Mary and her older sibling Kelly to Genova.
Initially loving the new lifestyle, Joe soon finds himself torn between memories of Marianne and the possibility of a new romance while the guilt-wracked Mary finds dangerous solace with role models who resemble her mother.
Italy locations: One of the few English movies I have found featuring Genoa.
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Ocean’s Twelve, the second installment of the “Oceans” series, follows the infamous members of the “Ocean’s Eleven” crew after their Las Vegas casino heist in the first film.
The owner of three robbed Vegas casinos, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), confronts each member of the team, demanding all the money back within two weeks. Coming up short, the group (Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Roberts, Zeta-Jones, etc.) stage another heist to pay off the debt, and this time it’s in Europe.
The movie was filmed in several locations around the world. Italy locations include:
Sicily Locations: Scopello, Castellammare del Golfo, Trapani. The stars stayed in Trapani while in Sicily and encountered & mingled with the local Cosa Nostra (Sicilian mob)
Rome Location: Palazzo Naiadi, Grand Hotel Plaza, Trevi Fountain, Villa Borghese and Via Condotti, Tre Scalini cafe, Spanish Steps
Lake Como Location: George Clooney’s Villa Erba in Laglio
Movies set in Lake Como
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In A Month by the Lake, a British spinster (Vanessa Redgrave) has been vacationing in April for the last 16 years at an elegant hillside villa at Lake Como. The trip in 1937 would be different. She eyes a factory owner (Edward Fox) but he is infatuated with a younger woman.
The younger woman is an American nanny Miss Beaumont (Uma Thurman), a tall, young American who has dropped out of finishing school in Switzerland, is bored, and finds some amusement in flirting with the major.
Italy Location: Santa Maria Rezzonico town in the northern part of Lake Como.
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James Bond makes several visits to Italy throughout the 007 Films.
In Casino Royale, after receiving a license to kill, British Secret Service agent James Bond (Daniel Craig) heads to Madagascar, where he uncovers a link to Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), a man who finances terrorist organizations. Learning that Le Chiffre plans to raise money in a high-stakes poker game, MI6 sends Bond to play against him, gambling that their newest “00” operative will topple the man’s organization.
Venice Location: Bond tries to rescue doomed love Vesper Lynd from a collapsing building (Lion Morosini Palace Hotel)
Lake Como Location: Bond recovers on the shores of Lake Como at the Villa del Balbianello.
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Star Wars needs no introduction. The films have used some pretty epic locations around the world to create a futuristic world and Star Wars – Attack of the Clones continues this tradition.
Italy Location: Take a trip to Villa del Balbianello, a National Trust property for beautiful views over Lake Como and the spot where Anakin and Padmé were married.
Movies set in The Dolomites
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In For Your Eyes Only, British agent James Bond is dispatched to recover a strategic communications device before it finds its way into the hands of the Russians.
When the secret device that controls Britain’s Polaris submarines goes missing after the spy ship carrying it sinks, 007 joins forces with a vengeful woman and a wealthy hero of the Greek resistance movement to find the equipment.
Italy locations: Bond travels to the Dolomites including the winter sports resort Cortina d’Ampezzo, Miramonti Majestic Grand Hotel, and the Olympic Ice Stadium which was built for the 1956 Winter Olympics.
Movies set in Milan
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In I Am Love, a Russian woman Emma (Tilda Swinton) has married into a rich aristocratic Recchi family that operates textile mills in Milan. At a birthday party dinner for the Recchi patriarch, her husband, Tancredi, learns that he and their son Edoardo Recchi Jr. are about to assume control of the Edoardo Recchi Sr.’s lucrative business.
Emma meets a chef named Antonio and soon find themselves in bed together. With the family already divided over the elder Recchi’s unusual plans, Emma’s affair is the wild card that might divide the family for good. An interesting film about tradition and Emma’s feeling of being an outsider in this aristocratic family.
Italy locations: Filmed around Milan, the Lombardy and Liguria regions. You can take a guided tour of the home used in the movie – Villa Necchi Campiglio.
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Teri Didjurgis
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