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Living as the locals do, Andrew Clark retraces the film locales of a decades-old classic to explore 'the sweet life' that venerated director Federico Fellini found in Italy's stunning capital

The iconic Piazza del Popolo in Rome was the site where La Dolce Vita’s director Federico Fellini shot a scene in which the protagonist and his rich lover pick up a prostitute.

It's 1 a.m., early by Roman standards, and outside a club tucked into the side of a 16th-century palazzo, a jazz singer croons Summertime for a small well-dressed audience who all seem to know each other. In an adjacent piazza-turned-parking lot, glassy-eyed patrons smile as they conspire together over the hood of a car.

A tall British man (think: Benedict Cumberbatch wannabe dressed like an overgrown child in designer jean shorts and T-shirt) emerges from the bar and starts yelling, "You don't talk to my woman! You don't talk to my woman!" at a bewildered Italian who is reluctant to accept his offer to step onto the cobblestone street and settle the dispute with fists. The crowd casts a sanguine gaze upon the scene.

I came to Rome on a pilgrimage, not to the Vatican, but to retrace the locations of Federico Fellini's 1960 masterpiece, La Dolce Vita. While other visitors swarm the Forum and the Colosseum, I've been to the Via Veneto, Cinecitta Studios, the Trevi Fountain and the EUR District looking for insight into one of the most successful foreign films ever made. It's been elusive. And just as I was about to stop, I stumbled upon a scene that echoes his vision of "the sweet life." It teems with nocturnal characters, the prosaic present plays out before a backdrop of the heroic past.

As the Brit continues to howl, I think myself a detached observer but – clutching a glass of Cardhu whisky, dressed in a MacGruber T-shirt, jeans and espadrilles – I'm just as much a part of the strange scenery as anyone else, another willing extra in Rome's great show.

North America's infatuation with Fellini's tale of Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), an aspiring novelist turned celebrity journalist, began shortly after its release. Marcello is a "man who got everything he wanted," Shawn Levy writes in Dolce Vita Confidential. "And lost everything he had." I first saw it in 1986. He was everything I was not: sophisticated, stylish, sought after by women. Most importantly, he was something every young writer aspires to be – beautifully unhappy.

Previous trips to Rome for work involved cramped overpriced hotels. My wife and I decide we wish to live like well-heeled locals and that leads us to Onefinestay; a company that offers curated luxury apartment rentals in cities such as London, New York and San Francisco. Onefinestay gives each guest an iPhone with unlimited data and offers 24-hour concierge service. Onefinestay began offering homes in Rome in 2016. It accepts one out of every 10 apartments. "We're very picky," says Onefinestay's Rome general manger Federico Oneto. "We started with 30 properties and we are now at over 70."

Director Federico Fellini believed the best way to see Rome was with two pairs of eyes – one that knows it well and one seeing it for the first time.

We spend a few nights in a place in Trastevere and the balance of the trip in a three-level apartment just off the Via Giulia, a street that runs parallel to the River Tiber and is lined with pricey antique shops, Renaissance churches and boutiques. Both properties have stunning interiors and have rooftop garden terraces, where one can enjoy a morning espresso or an afternoon glass of wine. The apartment off Via Giulia has a panoramic view that includes St. Peter's Dome. It's so beautiful you almost feel guilty going out.

I visit the Piazza del Popolo, where Fellini shot a scene in which Marcello and his rich lover Maddalena pick up a prostitute, and then head up the street to meet Mario Sesti, the artistic director of the International Rome Film Festival. "You can't really find La Dolce Vita because Fellini is not reality," he tells me. "He completed the work with his fantasy. He had a way of grasping something deep in the soul of the city."

As for living the sweet life, Sesti teases me, "I'm not sure if the idea of La Dolce Vita is something you have in North America. It's to be very happy every day and every minute, to be extreme in your everyday life. Fellini pushed the border of this attitude."

I do my best to adapt – aiming at least to be happy for every meal. Via Giulia is home to many excellent restaurants. Pianostrada offers nouvelle Italian cuisine. La Fiaschetta is more traditional but has a chef who also likes to shake up expectations. Across the Tiber in Trastevere, Le Mani in Pasta offers some of the best seafood around and, further south in Testaccio, restaurants such as La Torricella serve succulent traditional dishes such as cacio e pepe.

Fellini believed the best way to see Rome was with two pairs of eyes – one that knows it well and one seeing it for the first time. Luckily we have friends in Trastevere – award-winning novelist Matthew Kneale and Shannon Russell, a professor of English literature at John Cabot University. The couple came to Rome for a one-year adventure. They're been here for more than two decades.

Over for aperitivo, they offer restaurant and sight-seeing suggestions and insight into Rome. "I would not want to live anywhere else," says Kneale, whose book, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings, will be published this fall. "Though it can take a long time to feel a part of the city." In Rome, everything has its predecessor. Fellini's iconic Trevi Fountain scene was not the first, observes Russell. Nathaniel Hawthorne used it in The Marble Faun and Germaine de Stael in 1807 in Corinne.

My first stop on the Dolce Vita tour is the Via Veneto, a broad boulevard lined by Magnolia trees and some of Rome's most expensive luxury hotels and sidewalk cafes. Today, it's populated by wealthy tourists, but during its heyday, it was a mecca for "Hollywood on the Tiber" and it is where Marcello looks for stories. The Hotel Excelsior's street-side bar, Doney's, was a popular celebrity hangout.

"Nothing has changed there but the colour of the tables," a Roman familiar with the Via Veneto tells me over coffee. The Hotel Excelsior remains one of Rome's finest luxury hotels. Fellini used it as the location for a scene in which Marcello brings the movie star Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) back to the Excelsior at dawn, where her drunken American boyfriend beats up Marcello. When I ask my companion if I can stand at the spot where Mastroianni took his punches, she obliges, puzzled by my fixation. "Italians have forgotten La Dolce Vita," she says. "That's the mindset of the sixties."

Much of Fellini's masterpiece was filmed in Studio 5 at Cinecitta Studios, an enormous complex in the south of Rome that's easily reached by metro. Fellini adored working here and signed away his percentage of the profits in order to pay to have the Via Veneto meticulously recreated in its 40 metre by 80 metre soundstage. Built by Mussolini in 1937, Cinecitta is still a working studio (the second-largest in Europe) that boasts world-class crews and effects departments. It's been home to American productions such as Gangs of New York and Zoolander II as well as Italian television shows and, most recently, The Young Pope.

For a film-lover, Cinecitta is sacred ground. When actors or directors are in Rome they often ask for a tour. "Ryan Gosling came to visit and he knew everything about the films that had been shot here and about the studios," Cinecitta's general manager Giuseppe Basso says. "For 80 years, the most important artists working in film have worked here. Those who are passionate about films want to experience it."

I take a guided tour which includes the Fellini exhibit, plus standing sets that include a fully realized version of ancient Rome and 15th-century Florence. After the tour, visitors can enjoy its café and lounge in the shade of the umbrella pines that line its grounds.

The 18th-century Trevi Foundation in Rome was the location of an iconic scene in La Dolce Vita, in which a character takes a dip in the fixture. Handout

Next is a guided tour of the Trevi Fountain – the location of the film's most iconic scene, in which Ekberg takes dip. "They put her in a movie," our guide Francesca Diumich says. "If you do it today, they'll put you in jail."

Designed by 18th-century Italian architect Nicola Salvi, the area around the Trevi Fountain becomes so crammed with tourists by midday, it's almost impossible to move.

Scenes of La Dolce Vita by Fellini in Rome. Selfies at the Trevi Fountain. Andrew Clark

When we arrive at 8:30 a.m., there are already hundreds standing before it, taking photographs. I realize the greatest tragedy in cinema is that the world will never get to see what Fellini would have made of the "selfie."

Our final stop is the 420-acre EUR District. Commissioned by Mussolini in the 1930s for the Esposizione Universale Roma, a World's Fair planned for 1942 to celebrate 20 years of fascist rule. Its buildings were designed according to the principles of "Rationalist Architecture." Mussolini wanted to create a new Roman empire and the EUR was supposed to show the world the spirit that would make it happen. In La Dolce Vita, the EUR figures prominently as a location and a backdrop. When called to the scene of his friend's murder-suicide, Marcello stands on the balcony and looks out over the EUR.

The EUR's most famous building is the six-storey Palazzo della Civilta Italiana – known as the Colosseo Quadrato (Square Colosseum) to Romans. An imposing structure that was intended to be Mussolini's centrepiece, it is home to the Italian fashion house Fendi. Visitors may tour the first floor, where regular art exhibitions are held. Before moving on to other site, we stop at the charming Caffe Palombini for a cappuccino. It was also part of Mussolini's project and is decorated with works of modern art.

There's something hypnotic about the EUR. To Fellini, it represented the fascist ruin on which modern Italy was built. But the sweet life? No. I'm still left grasping. Then, as the end of our trip nears, we hear music while sitting on our terrace.

We follow it and find ourselves outside a 16th-century palazzo as a singer croons out Summertime and a Brit yells, "You don't talk to my woman!" at a bewildered Italian. A whiff of violence is in the air. As she serenades us, the singer raises her hand and gives the Brit the finger.

And it's beautiful.

Fellini said La Dolce Vita was about Rome – the Internal City as well as the Eternal City. The "sweet life" is a mistranslation. Fellini considered it "the sweetness in life." That innocence can turn cynicism into "constructive sophistication" and "awakened to a new sensibility, revealing what you see everyday without really seeing it at all."

Like the beauty in an Italian singer crooning an American classic giving a boorish Brit the finger while a Canadian in a MacGruber T-shirt drinking whisky marvels at its sublime banality. Only in Rome.

If you go

The Trevi Fountain, one of Rome's most popular tourist stops.

Where to stay

Onefinestay

This elite service offers distinctive private homes in cities such as London, Rome, Miami and Paris. Guests are greeted at the property. Onefinestay offers 24-hour concierge service, housekeeping and airport transfers. Travel advisers are available to help book tours and sightseeing.

Via Veneto

The Westin Hotel Excelsior remains one of Rome's finest luxury hotels. Need a little room? The Villa la Cupola, on the fifth and sixth floor, is the largest suite in Italy. It boasts a private elevator, gym, seven private terraces and marble staircase leading to an upper floor of the suite. Yours for €21,000 per night. People-watch at Cafe Doney, which serves drinks and food throughout the day.

What to do

Cinecitta

Tours are offered daily (except Tuesdays) from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Includes permanent sets and exhibitions such as the Fellini Room and the History of Cinecitta. There is a "Backstage" interactive environment. cinecittastudios.it

EUR District

Can be reached by Line B Metro. You can start tour at EUR Magliana and finish at EUR Palasport. Francesca Duimich, a knowledgeable guide and the president of Rome's tour guide union, offers a terrific EUR tour. guideroma@federagit.org

Where to eat

Campo de' Fiori

  • Aperitivo at Vino E Olio: Small place with a fabulous selection of wines and tasty nibbles. 14 Via dei Banchi Vecchi
  • Dinner at Pianostrada: A “food lab” that is reinventing traditional Roman cuisine. 22 Via delle Zoccolette
  • Dinner at La Fiaschetta: Friendly staff and delicious cuisine. 64 Via dei Cappellari.

Before You Go

  • In Toronto, take private Italian lessons with tutorino.ca
  • Read Dolce Vita Confidential: Fellini, Loren, Pucci, Paparazzi and the Swinging High Life of 1950s Rome by Shawn Levy. Comprehensive and exuberant, Levy chronicles the rise of Il Boom and the world of La Dolce Vita.