First the wall you are sitting on would slide down into the valley, then the town square, the war monument, the cafe, the card players, and then the houses higher up on the hillside, one after another.Ī script girl came wandering around the comer of the castle, waved to the men playing cards, and shouted to Zeffirelli: "Almost ready to go."
You can imagine how it would happen if the castle disappeared. Their voices come across the square in disconnected pieces, a word at a time, all in Italian. In front of the cafe, members of the company play cards and drink wine with men of Artena. The names from World War II can still be read, but the names from the first war have largely been worn away.īeyond the war monument there is the cafe, open all night this week because Signor Zeffirelli has brought his film crew out from Rome. Directly in front of you there is a weather-beaten war monument. At this point, the wall forms one side of the Town Square. That is the sort of thing you think about at 2 a.m., while you are sipping brandy and sitting on the castle wall, waiting for the moon to come up and illuminate the balcony scene. If the castle were to disappear, Artena would slide down into the valley and you would read about it in the newspaper.
All you can do is sit on the wall and look up at the town, with a light bulb suspended above every street corner. At one time, the Borghese controlled all the land they could see."īut you can see none of it now, because it is two in the morning and the valley is covered with darkness. "If the castle were to disappear," Zeffirelli said, "I wonder how long the town would remain. It was built in the 16th Century by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and is still in the family the current owner, who restored it after Allied shellings during World War II, is Prince Valerio Borghese. The castle is literally carved into the hillside, 20 miles from Rome along the road to Naples. And the moon even rises at the right place in the sky." There was already a hidden garden where Romeo could wait, and it was overlooked by a balcony where Juliet could stand. Then one afternoon a friend who was born in Artena drove me out here to look at the Palazzo and he was right. I probably climbed through a dozen castles over a period of three months. "We didn't want studio sets for the balcony scene. "I looked for a long time before I found this place," Zeffirelli said.
And on the other side of the castle wall was the secret garden where the families of the Borghese had doubtless spent their afternoons 400 years ago. Above him, the little town clung to the hillside, each house stacked above the last. Behind him, the wall fell 100 feet into the valley. He sat cross-legged on the old stone wall of the Palazzo Borghese and sipped brandy from a paper cup. Romeo and Juliet were upstairs asleep in the castle, and Franco Zeffirelli kept the night watch alone.
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