The alleys, streets and squares of Rome evoke his image and his talent.
The set of her life were those places immortalized in many, many films shot in the symbolic places of the Eternal City, in one of the most magical periods of Italian cinema.
"Roman of Rome" for seven generations, Monica Vitti has always been linked to her city of hers, with which she has had a visceral mutual love.
She is a "panoramic" Rome, often experienced by the penthouses in which she lived, from the residential area of
Collina Fleming
, where she lived with Michelangelo Antonioni, to the very central
Piazza del Popolo
, where she died today at the age of 90.
But Monica Vitti's Rome is also that of Umbertine, that of
via Francesco Crispi
, between Piazza di Spagna and the Quirinale.
There she was born (so at least she "believes", as she herself admits in an interview) in 1931 with the very Roman name of Maria Luisa Ceciarelli, then changed into a bar in Villa Massimo.
Monica chose it from the protagonist of a novel, Vitti-instead-from the abbreviation of the surname of her mother (Vittiglia).
On her ninetieth birthday, on November 3 last year, her city paid homage to her with some murals that appeared in many downtown neighborhoods.
The black and white photo of her and the words "Amore Nostro" were her message to the actress, who for years had been struggling with the disease alongside her husband Roberto Russo.
"Rome has lost yet another piece of its own", many repeat, recalling Roman icons such as Gigi Proietti or Alberto Sordi who, with Monica Vitti, have often paired up on the big screen.
Rome accompanied her throughout her life, from her first steps on the theater stage, to her first dubbing and then to the Hollywood sets on the Tiber, alongside the most important actors and actresses on the Italian scene.
And she, who was deeply in love with Rome, never abandoned her.
She told the Romans she "loved one's city and treated it as if it were the living room of one's home".
"Here there is a kind of enchantment, of magic - Gianfranco Gramola told the journalist - The fact that the Romans are no longer surprised at anything is because they can do it. They have seen everything, they know everything, because they live in a city that it has so much history that it is the envy of the rest of the world ".
"
Glimpses of the capital framed his talent, providing the backdrop for many of the films he took part in, from Antonioni's "Eclipse" to Alberto Sordi's "You know that I know".
She herself, in 1990, chose Rome as the location for her only directorial film "Scandalo Segreto".
"For me Rome is an absolutely open city - he said -. 'Rome, open city', like the title of a famous film, is one of the most beautiful phrases that can be said of Rome. It was open to escape from the Germans in the war and it is open precisely as a matter of mind, mentality, images, culture and everything. Then Rome has no presumption, despite it being so, precisely architecturally powerful. Rome is nice, like its inhabitants, shopkeepers and ordinary people, in short they are nice and with their irony and cheerfulness, they reflect their own city ".
And in the days of sunset Monica Vitti, now hidden from the prying of most people, had chosen, so a legend goes by Michele Placido,
.
"I saw her walking", swore the actor and director.
If Alberto Sordi had the honor of becoming mayor for a day during the Rutelli administration, Monica Vitti would have been a perfect first citizen, bringing some "Stardust" to the Capitol.