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"Rome captured the popular imagination of America in the early 1960s, when Fellini's La Dolce Vita portrayed the sweet life of stars and paparazzi in the city and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had their famous affair during the filming of Cleopatra at Cinecitt\u00E0 Studios. Woody Allen, an admirer of postwar Italian movies, has created his own comic paean to the Eternal City with his latest film, To Rome with Love. When the Cinema Society and Piaget hosted the film's recent New York premiere at the Paris Theatre, we asked Allen, members of his starry ensemble cast, and other well-known guests about their favorite places in Rome. After all, in an age of global media, don't all movie press junkets eventually lead to Rome?\n\nRome captured the popular imagination of America in the early 1960s, when Fellini's La Dolce Vita portrayed the sweet life of stars and paparazzi in the city and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had their famous affair during the filming of Cleopatra at Cinecitt\u00E0 Studios. Woody Allen, an admirer of postwar Italian movies, has created his own comic paean to the Eternal City with his latest film, To Rome with Love. When the Cinema Society and Piaget hosted the film's recent New York premiere at the Paris Theatre, we asked Allen, members of his starry ensemble cast, and other well-known guests about their favorite places in Rome. After all, in an age of global media, don't all movie press junkets eventually lead to Rome?\n\nPinterestFacebook\u00A9Patrick McMullan\n\nAllen recalled spending days with a location scout seeing 30 spots per day. \"Every temple, every building\u2014it was incredible,\" he said. \"At the ruins you're overcome with the historical sense that Romans in togas were sitting around negotiating the senate there. It's amazing. And then you see a building by Renzo Piano. The streets with the moss-covered buildings are just so beautiful. For a cosmopolitan New Yorker, Paris is like New York, only more beautiful. But when you go to Rome, it's totally different.\"\n\n\"The whole city is pretty magical,\" answered Greta Gerwig. In the film, she is the girlfriend of a student architect played by Jesse Eisenberg. \"The hotel where we were staying was across the park from the Villa Borghese,\" the actress continued. \"I grew to love that park. It's so beautiful\u2014and you can buy a beer there.\"\n\nPinterestFacebook\u00A9 Patrick McMullan\n\n\"The gardens at the Villa Borghese are gorgeous,\" concurred Melissa George on her way into the theater. \"They're full of statues and hiding cats. Also, I remember my first day, I arrived on a scooter and saw this Italian man running across the street with a tray of espressos, and I thought that was just so exactly like what I expected Rome would be.\"\n\nPinterestFacebook\u00A9 Patrick McMullan\n\nAlec Baldwin, whose character in the film is a distinguished architect, did not single out Rome's great ancient sites or its modern charms. Instead, he mentioned everyone's favorite retreat after a long day on hot cobblestones: \"The pool at the hotel,\" he quipped.\n\nCarol Alt, who plays Baldwin's wife in the film, told AD that Italians \"gave me my first jobs as a model and as an actor. I've done probably 65 films there.\" She added that she has \"pictures on my phone of all the paparazzi on the street taking pictures of me and Alec.\" And her favorite location? \"A friend has a huge, spectacular villa in the center of Rome,\" she said. \"It took six years to dig a garage in his basement, because they kept finding architectural treasures.\"\n\nPinterestFacebook\u00A9Patrick McMullan\n\nJon Hamm and his partner, Jennifer Westfeldt, the actress and filmmaker, recalled visiting Rome together and staying at the Hotel Hassler, at the top of the Spanish Steps. \"The service is old-school,\" said Westfeldt, explaining how they fell in love with the hotel. \"We had never been to Italy before\u2014it was so exciting.\"\n\n\"We recognized a lot of the locations in the film,\" Hamm added. \"The running gag of people giving complicated directions in Rome was very, very funny. And the last shot, at the Piazza Navona, was gorgeous.\"\n\n\"The whole of Rome is just incredible,\" Kelly Klein told AD. She specifically mentioned the Palazzo Senatorio, with its dramatic 16th-century staircase designed by Michelangelo. \"It's where I married Calvin [Klein, her ex-husband]. It now serves as the mayor of Rome's office, and it's a really elaborate, very special building. At our ceremony nobody spoke English, but it was great.\"\n\nPinterestFacebook\u00A9 Patrick McMullan\n\n\"We went to some great restaurants,\" said singer John Legend, who attended the after-party at Casa Lever with his fianc\u00E9e, model Chrissy Teigen. \"We were there for Thanksgiving. We went to the Vatican, which is so gorgeous and magical.\"\n\nKate Flannery, best known for her role on The Office, said that she had visited Rome with a college buddy. \"We met two cops who told us their names were Starsky and Hooch,\" she recalled. \"Like everyone else, we stayed on a little piazza where you can get the giant caf\u00E9 latte. And we went to all the churches. It's hard not to have an amazing experience there.\"\n\nPinterestFacebook\u00A9Patrick McMullan\n\nAlessandra Mastronardi, cast in the film as a dutiful wife who has a romantic brush with her favorite movie star, said that she fell in love with all the squares that Allen chose to shoot. \"I'm Italian, and I really love Rome, but from now on, Piazza del Popolo will always be different for me. It's a huge square full of people, friends, lovers.\"\n\nThe musician Moby also mentioned a special memory of Piazza del Popolo. \"It's right near the Rocco Forte Hotel de Russie, where I stayed. It's an ancient plaza with a big column in the middle, and I played a crazy concert there to celebrate the anniversary of the original moon landing.\"\n\n\"I love the Piazza di Spagna,\" said Fabio Amiliato, the charismatic tenor who plays a mortician who can sing only in the shower. \"The first time I was in Rome, the theater called me to sing because my colleague was getting ill. They actually tracked me down at the Spanish Steps.\"\n\nPinterestFacebook\u00A9Patrick McMullan\n\n\"I used to have a boyfriend who was from Milan,\" jewelry designer Zani Gugelmann recounted. \"And in Rome we would always take a Vespa\u2014that's the only way to see Rome. You put your helmet on, go up the hill, and look down on Rome and the Colosseum. It's just monumental.\"\n\n\"There's a tiny restaurant called Santa Lucia [12 Largo Febo],\" said Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir, \"that has a dozen tables outside, in a little park. You're in this leafy garden in the middle of a residential neighborhood. And the pasta is perfection.\"\n\nPinterestFacebook\u00A9 Patrick McMullan\n\n\"I actually bumped into Woody Allen in Rome,\" answered Chris Rock. And what does Rock love there in particular? Without pausing to ponder, he replied, \"The gelato.\"\n\nGo behind the scenes of To Rome with Love with AD's look at the movie's set design.**"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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