Catania on the big screen

Catania has always been a center of culture and entertainment for all of Italy, so it is not surprising to discover that it has often been chosen as a setting for international and national films. Let’s find out together which locations and buildings in the city have been walked by actors and directors to bring to light some of the most beautiful films ever made!

1. Porticciolo di Ognina: one of the greatest films of Italian comedy, Divorce Italian Style is considered a true cult of Italian cinema, also highly appreciated abroad, where it won prestigious awards at Cannes at the Oscars. Filmed between the province of Ragusa and Catania, one of the most characteristic backgrounds of the film is certainly Porto Ulisse: the scene is that of Fefè offering wine to the lawyer De Marzi and imagining how about the crime he wants to perpetuate against his wife in a restaurant located in the harbour.
2. Palazzo Biscari:the new version of Cyrano by director Joe Wright and starring Peter Dinklage used the wonders of Sicilian baroque to transport audiences into the story of Edmond Rostand. The Biscari palace is shown in all its splendor with a scene at the beginning of the film set in the Party Hall, the driving scene of the whole story: the moment in which Rossana and Christian meet their eyes for the first time, falling madly in love.
3. Massimo Bellini Theatre: the theater dedicated to the great composer Vincenzo Bellini came to the rescue during the filming of one of the funniest films of the great Roberto Benigni, Johnny Stecchino. The iconic theater scene with “Johnny” and Maria was in fact filmed in the Teatro Massimo in Catania, not in Palermo, because the Teatro Massimo in Palermo was under renovation at the time.
4. Manganelli Palace:Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard is one of the most iconic films of Italian and international cinema (recently Martin Scorsese himself included it in his list of the 12 favorite films of all time), and for the director it was essential to be able to bring to the screen the beauty of Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel. Among the many locations visited, Visconti was struck by the beauty of Palazzo Manganelli and shot some scenes in its corridors and rooms, to best represent the Sicilian aristocracy. Even today, a Grand Ball in costume inspired by the novel has been held at the palace for several years.
5. Via Crociferi:this street is one of the oldest in the historic center of Catania. Rich in churches built following the so-called Catania baroque style, its beauty has pushed several directors to use it as a backdrop for their films. To conclude this list, we give you two films with scenes shot in this street, united by a single rouge file, Giovanni Verga: on the one hand we have Storia di una Capinera from 1993, based on the novel by the Sicilian writer, with the final scene of the farewell kiss between the two protagonists, Maria and Nino, under the arch of San Benedetto; on the other we have The Strangeness of Roberto d’Andò, where a Pirandello played by Toni Servillo goes to via Crociferi to visit his friend Verga.