Cinecittà World · monumental entrance · 2013 — 2014

Cabiria Gate

The Temple of Moloch from Pastrone's film (1914), rebuilt to the scale of a park entrance.

Act one

The first kolossal
of Italian cinema.

18 April 1914. Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone opens in Italian cinemas (signed under the pseudonym Piero Fosco). Titles and intertitles: Gabriele D'Annunzio. Two hundred minutes of film — one of the longest films ever made up to that point. Setting: Second Punic War, between the eruption of Mount Etna and the siege of Carthage. The protagonist, Cabiria, is a child kidnapped and sold as a slave. She is saved by two characters destined to become icons: Maciste, the gentle giant played by Genoese dockworker Bartolomeo Pagano, and the Roman spy Fulvio Assila.

Cabiria is the first film to use the dolly — a tracked camera mount invented and patented by Pastrone, known ever since as the "Cabiria dolly". Four years later, D.W. Griffith would build Intolerance directly looking at this work. The most remembered scene — the one Cinecittà World rebuilds at the park entrance — is the Temple of the god Moloch of Carthage: twenty-six actors and three hundred extras among columns, hieroglyphs, sculpted monsters devouring sacrificed children.

Cyclopean overview of the park entrance gate under construction: monumental curved-wave structure in raw concrete, side ribs, Italian flag on the roof, crane in action in the foreground — The gate under construction, January 2014

The central arch of the gate seen from the interior during construction: giant vesica piscis (almond) shape, wavy concrete structure being finished, paint cans and pipes on the ground, workers above — The central arch, still raw

3/4 view of the gate's side façade: concrete ribs, curved wavy entrance arch, monumental staircase, construction site still active with machines in the background — The side structure, in progress

Act two

A hundred years later,
sculpted again.

A hundred years after Pastrone, Dante Ferretti — the park's artistic direction — decides that Cinecittà World's entrance must be the Temple of Moloch. Not a generic homage to Italian cinema: an exact citation of the original 1914 scenography. It is a precise gesture. The first Italian kolossal opens the first Italian theme park dedicated to cinema, exactly one hundred years later.

The construction site documented by the photos from our archive is from 15 January 2014: six months before the park's opening. The gate is a cyclopean structure, several storeys high, with a large central vesica piscis arch — the geometric "almond" Pastrone had used in the film as the idol's mouth. On the sides, an Assyrian façade with four winged lions in bas-relief on the upper frieze, hieroglyphs sculpted on the pilasters. All in faux stone patinated to an ashen tone, as seen in the film's black-and-white prints.

Immediately after the gate, the visitor passes through a large red curtain — the cinema curtain — and finds themselves inside Cinecittà Street, the park's main street rebuilt by repurposing the set of Gangs of New York by Scorsese. That is how the park opens: a Punic temple, a red curtain, and then 1860s Manhattan.

Detail of the gate's internal Assyrian façade: portico with four arches between hieroglyph-carved pilasters, upper frieze with four winged-lion masks in bas-relief, ash-coloured faux stone — The winged lions, Temple frieze

Front overview of the gate under construction: central vesica piscis arch, side ribs, yellow telescopic crane on the right, construction rubble in the foreground — The central arch, front view

Overview of the cyclopean structure: concrete ribs and wavy structure, staircase to the upper level, Italian tricolour flag flying on the gate's roof still under construction — Tricolour on the roof, 15 January 2014

Behind the scenes

A set in black and white,
translated into faux stone.

Ferretti's challenge was this: Cabiria is a silent black-and-white film. Everything we know about the Temple of Moloch comes from graphic, high-contrast stills, without colour. Translating a 1914 aesthetic into a 2014 architecture, permanent and visitable, meant deciding what colour that building had in the audience's dreams. The chosen one was the ash-grey of ancient stone.

Detail of the Cabiria Gate's internal Assyrian façade: portico with four arches, frieze with four winged-lion masks, hieroglyphs sculpted on the pilasters, yellow crane in the foreground — The internal Assyrian façade, with the four winged lions. Castel Romano, January 2014.

1914 the year of Pastrone's Cabiria · 100 years before the park

200 minutes of the original film · one of the first kolossals ever made

326 extras in the Temple scene · 26 main actors · 300 extras

The Temple of the god Moloch
from which Maciste saves little Cabiria,
rebuilt at the park's entrance.

Cabiria Gate · Cinecittà World Castel Romano, since 24 July 2014

Tech sheet

All production data

Type: Monumental scenographic architecture · theme-park entrance
Location: Cinecittà World · Castel Romano, Rome
Public opening: 24 July 2014 · with the park's opening
Artistic direction: Dante Ferretti, three-time Academy Award winner
Inspiration: The Temple of the god Moloch from the film Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone (1914), titles by Gabriele D'Annunzio
Documented site: 15 January 2014 · 6 months before the opening
Architectural elements: Large central vesica piscis arch · internal Assyrian façade with four winged-lion masks · four-arch portico · hieroglyphs on the pilasters · cyclopean ribbed concrete structure
Materials: Reinforced-concrete load-bearing structure · finishes in sculpted faux stone · ash-grey patina
Subsequent passage: After the Gate, a large red curtain leads to Cinecittà Street (the 2002 Gangs of New York set repurposed)
Our role: Scenographic work for the park's entrance Gate: Assyrian façade with bas-reliefs, friezes with four winged lions, large vesica piscis arch, sculpting of the faux-stone finishes patinated ash-grey. The photos from our archive in January 2014 document the gate's construction site, six months before the park's opening to the public.
Cabiria 1914 — innovations: First invention of the cinematic dolly (patented by Pastrone, "Cabiria dolly") · direct influence on Griffith's Intolerance (1916) · 2006 restoration presented at Cannes with introduction by Martin Scorsese
Cluster: Part of the Cinecittà World cluster
Second life: Gate on stage at the park entrance since 24 July 2014 · seen by every visitor entering · philological citation of Pastrone 1914

Second life

From 1914 to 2014,
a hundred years of Cabiria.

The Cinecittà World Gate pays homage to Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone, 1914 — the film with which the Italian kolossal is born and for which Pastrone patents the cinematic dolly ("Cabiria dolly"), directly influencing Griffith's Intolerance two years later. In 2006 the film is restored and presented at Cannes with an introduction by Martin Scorsese — the same director of the Gangs of New York set at Cinecittà.

In 2014 Ferretti chooses Cabiria as the narrative incipit of Cinecittà World: the visitor entering the park passes under the large vesica piscis arch and through the Assyrian façade with winged lions — exactly the iconography of the 1914 film. A hundred years of Italian cinema summed up in an entrance gate.

Cabiria Gate

A set in black and white,translated into faux stone.

From 1914 to 2014,a hundred years of Cabiria.

A set in black and white,
translated into faux stone.

From 1914 to 2014,
a hundred years of Cabiria.