Where it was filmed 'Leopardi'

Giacomo’s childhood passes slowly in Recanati with his siblings Carlo and Paolina, as he studies madly and desperately in the family library. His only distraction is observing the ill-fated Teresa Fattorini (who dies very young), the daughter of the family’s coachman, from his window, to whom he dedicates the unforgettable A Silvia. Leopardi’s descendants made the family’s 18th century villa available for some scenes, in particular the lavish first-floor library with its 20,000 volumes, and Giacomo’s bedroom.

The alleyways of the old town and the landscapes of Recanati, like those of Castelfidardo and Osimo, and a number of private houses, were used for some of the shots.

At this stage in his life, Giacomo was in close contact with the writer Pietro Giordani, who, seeing great potential in the young man, decided to go and see him. During his visit, he takes Giacomo and his brother Carlo to the Holy House of Loreto. We recognise it in the semi-darkness when Giacomo and Carlo’s authoritarian father Monaldo, upon discovering that his children have “escaped”, catches up with them in a carriage, to then listen to them chatting, in secret, in the Sanctuary.

At the age of 24, Giacomo finally heads off in discovery of the world. In Florence he lives under the protective wing of Antonio Ranieri, a Neapolitan student in exile, and attends the beautiful Fanny Targioni-Tozzetti’s literary salons. During one of these evenings, Giordani shows the three young people the Psyche Abandoned, a marble sculpture by Pietro Tenerani, which is today housed at the Gallery of Modern Art in Florence. The friendship between Giacomo, Antonio and Fanny is summarised pretty well in one scene in which the three a playing blind man’s bluff in a field in Fiesole. One of the intellectual settings frequented by the poet, Giacomo Leopardi, was recreated in the private library of Duchess Elena d’Aosta, an integral part of the Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III” in Naples.

Disappointed when his love for Fanny is not reciprocated, Giacomo moves to Rome with his friend Ranieri. They arrive in the eternal city through the Parco degli Acquedotti. In Rome, Giacomo goes in search of his uncle, Carlo Antici, and waits for him for a long time in a lavish room. We’re actually in Macerata, in the Hall of the Aeneid of the 18th-century Palazzo Buonaccorsi, today home to the town’s museum.

An amnesty means Ranieri can return to his hometown, and it is here that Leopardi, in the somewhat advanced stages of his illness, spends the last leg of his life. His Neapolitan haunts were recreated in the cloisters of the Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, in the 1600s a fortified monastery. The poet crosses the stairs that lead to the hill of Sant’Elmo, where the alleyways of Naples are recreated; the carpenters’ dressing rooms represent the slums of the city where Giacomo liked to roam and escape from intellectual salons; the Sala degli Angeli is used as the sacristy of a church, the Aula Schulte as his private room. Naples is depicted in all its veracity, as we see in a scene in which the poet, taking a turn in Piazza del Plebiscito, talks to some of the locals. Here, beneath the porticos of Basilica di San Francesco di Paola, with a view over Palazzo Reale, he would often sit to enjoy an ice-cream, against medical advice. Meanwhile there’s an outbreak of cholera in the city and Leopardi’s health deteriorates, but There is time for a trip to Pompeii. Ranieri takes him to Villa Ferrigni in Torre del Greco. Here, after seeing the eruption of Vesuvius, he writes La Ginestra, his poetic last will and testament. Shots of the villa, renamed Villa delle Ginestra in his honour, were filmed in Terzigno.