Cinecittà World theme park project unveiled
by Caroline Prosser (staff) | Friday, November 20th, 2009
Cinecitta (& I C U/Flickr)
Plans have been unveiled for a new theme park in Rome, based upon classic film titles. Cinecittà World, as it is set to be known, is projected for completion in 2014 after work begins next year. The estimated cost is some €500 million.
Mayor Gianni Alemanno, who was present at the unveiling said that the park - the latest in a run of entertainment ideas aimed at boosting tourism - will put Rome on a more even par with Paris and London:
“Theme parks are a global phenomenon that prompts hundreds of thousands of people to travel; but Italy, and Rome in particular, has been terribly behind in this sector,” he said.
If all goes set to plan the park will be based on classic movies such as ‘Ben Hur’ and titles by Federico Fellini which made the reputation of Rome’s ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’.
In charge of the creative side of the project will be Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti (’The Aviator’). The site will be modelled in part on
Fellini (sensesofcinema.com)
Hollywood’s Universal Studios park. ”It will be a thrilling voyage through the movies that made Cinecittà great,” Ferretti told reporters on Wednesday.
Few specific details on the parks rides have been divulged but one ride will feature the huge slide that Marcello Mastroianni travels down as his sexual history flashes by in Fellini’s ‘City of Women’, on which Ferretti was the set designer.
The location will be Castel Romano south of Rome, partly on the backlot of the former Dino De Laurentiis studio complex known as Dino Studios, which Cinecittà now owns.
Plans are also underway for a Childen’s theme park in Rome, MagicLand, based on the popular Winx franchise owned by Italy’s Rainbow Studios, with a 2011 target opening date.
