This is Part 1 of a guide to the filming locations of Vittorio de Sica’s 1948 film Ladri di biciclette (known in the English-speaking world as The Bicycle Thief or Bicycle Thieves). The modern locations are presented in Google Streetview windows: you can use the controls to pan around and, if you zoom out, you can even move to see things from a different angle.

The film begins in a shabby suburban housing estate which appears to have been dropped into the middle of a dusty, windswept plain. This is where Antonio, our hero, lives. The buildings in this scene can be found on the corner of Via Scarpanto and Via del Gran Paradiso in the suburb of Val Melaina, far to the north of the historic centre (thank you to the blog Tesori di Roma for identifying the exact location). You can see that the surrounding area is much more built up today; in his book Italian Neorealist Cinema, Christopher Wagstaff quotes a description of Val Melaina which explains that at the time of filming it was an unfinished housing project built five miles outside of the city and physically separated from it by undeveloped land.

A crowd gathers outside one of the buildings as an employment agent arrives and tells Antonio that a job is available for a worker who owns a bicycle. Here are the steps on which the agent stood (almost invisible under potted plants!).

As Antonio leaves, there is a small continuity error; he goes behind the building and heads up the narrow Via Monte Severo, but in the next shot he is walking in front of the buildings, up the main street of Via Scarpanto. Anyway, at the end of the block he finds his wife Maria among a group of women pulling water from a well. Today, the site of the well seems to have become the garden of a neighbouring building.

Antonio helps Maria carry the water further around the corner, and they then struggle down a rough, unfinished slope to the street where their apartment block is. Today, a newer, pale-coloured building has been built on this spot, so we can’t follow their path.

Antonio and Maria’s street appears to be Via Monte Bove, which is no longer accessible from this direction. In the following images, I compare the screenshot with one of the other streets in the estate, which gives a sense of what theirs would look like today.

Antonio and Maria sell their sheets to the pawnbroker in order to regain their bicycle. I have not been able to identify where the pawnbroker scenes were shot.

The two now travel to the bill-stickers’ depot, where Antonio goes to sign on as an employee. This is located in a small pedestrian street called Via del Montecatini, which leads off the Via del Corso (I am grateful to Alexandre Cataldo for this information – see the comments below).

Antonio lifts Maria up to look through the window, but someone slams it in her face.

Maria insists on going home via Via della Paglia where ‘la Santona’, the fortune-teller, lives. Sure enough, we see Antonio and Maria cycling down that picturesque street, which is located in Trastevere.

The fortune-teller herself actually lives around the corner on Via Giacomo Venezian, in a building with a distinctive door and windows (I’ve used a shot of the door from a later scene in the film).

Antonio can now look forward to his first day at work…

← Go back to the Introduction. Go forward to Part 2 →

Sources

– Gordon, Robert S.C. Bicycle Thieves. BFI Film Classics. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008.

– Tesori di Roma.

– Wagstaff, Christopher. Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach. University of Toronto Press, 2007.

Written by David Nicol (Department of Theatre, Dalhousie University). Screenshots are from the excellent Criterion Collection DVD of Bicycle Thieves. Here is a guide to purchasing a copy of the film in your region. Note: visit these locations at your own risk and research the area before going there; also, some of the locations may be private residences so please be respectful and don’t annoy the owners. If you have corrections or additional information please post them in the comments.