Top 10 things you may not know about Cinecittà

1. Cinecittà is the largest filmmaking facility on the European continent and its name means "cinema city".

2. Many of the most innovative and fantastic sets constructed in the history of filmmaking have been built within the walls of Cinecittà Studios, including sets for Ben Hur, Cleopatra, La Dolce Vita, The Last Emperor, The English Patient, Gangs of New York, The Passion and HBO's Rome.

3. More than 3.000 films have been made at Cinecittà - 83 have received Academy Award nominations and, of those, 48 have won Oscars.

4. The term "paparazzi" was coined at Cinecittà Studios after the phenomenal success of Fellini's La Dolce Vita, which featured a photographer named Paparazzo.

5. Elizabeth Taylor first met the great love of her life, Richard Burton, while filming Cleopatra at Cinecittà Studios.

6. Audry Hepburn and Mel Ferrer spent a week of their honeymoon at Cinecittà Studios when he was filming La madre in 1954.

7. The largest prop ever built for a motion picture, a forty-foot high Trojan Horse for Robert Wise's Helen of Troy, was constructed out of balsa wood at Cinecittà in 1954.

8. Martin Scorsese once referred to Cinecittà Studios as "sacred ground", an allusion to Fellini's description of it as a "temple of dreams"

9. Screen siren Uursula Andress began her screen career at age 17 as an extra in light comedies filmed at Cinecittà Studios.

10. Cinecittà Studios was one of the main "characters" of Fellini's 1987 pseudo-autobiographical film, Intervista.