Studio 5 at Cinecittà is firing on all cylinders. In its day, it was Federico Fellini’s favorite, in which he filmed La Dolce Vita, Amarcord and Eight and a Half. The director’s association with the studio was so strong that a funeral chapel was built on the lot for his memorial service in 1993.

This summer, a filmmaker of a different nature, Roland Emmerich, left behind his usual disaster films and used the lot to shoot the sword and sandal series Those About to Die, starring Anthony Hopkins as the Roman emperor Vespasian. The set is dominated by an arena in which the gladiators will fight to the death and an imperial box covered in purple fabric, the color of Roman rulers, along with solid marble stands — fake, of course, a convincing illusion made of papier-mâché.