The silver-haired gentleman in the perfectly tailored dark suit made a sweeping gesture and gave me a wistful smile.

“It was right here,” he said. “1952.” He pointed to a particular spot on the floor. “That is where she stood.”

If he was alive in 1952 he was a very little boy, but every guide I speak to at the Palazzo Colonna in Rome knows and reveres the spot where she stood. “Roman Holiday” was the first American film to be shot in its entirety in Italy, and “she” was Audrey Hepburn in her first starring film role, playing a princess on the lam who spends one glorious day in Rome with a journalist who figures he has the scoop of his career. Gregory Peck was the journalist; it didn’t take long for the scoop to turn into a brief romance.

“Roman Holiday” was released in 1953, not 1952, but in context the guide is correct: She stood there in 1952, when the film was shot. I walked over to stand where Ms. Hepburn did in the film’s final scene, as the princess prepared to bid farewell to Rome, to Mr. Peck, and to a room full of real journalists drafted to fill out the press conference — and although I have been a moviegoer since I was a child, I was not prepared for how delighted I would be to be exactly there, surrounded by make-believe memories.