All the Money in the World|Piazza Navona — The Last Free Night in Rome

Ridley Scott opens his Getty film here, in the long oval that was once Domitian's stadium, with a sixteen-year-old American drifting through the crowd as though the city belonged to him. Paul Getty III is teased by the women who work the square, buys nothing, keeps walking. Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers throws its water behind him. Within minutes of screen time he will be gone.

The choice of square matters. The real abduction, on 10 July 1973, happened a short walk south in Piazza Farnese, but Scott wanted the sequence to breathe first, and Navona gives him the deepest, most theatrical stage in Rome. The shape is not an accident of medieval building — the palazzi follow the exact footprint of the first-century racetrack beneath them, which is why the square curves at its northern end instead of squaring off.

Go at night and the film's geometry is still there. Three fountains on one axis, Sant'Agnese in Agone lit from below, caricature artists packing up around eleven, the noise thinning until you can hear the water. Stand at the Four Rivers and look north toward Via Agonale: that is the direction the story walks out of frame.

Free, always open, and busiest between seven and ten in the evening. Come at seven in the morning instead and you will have the whole stadium to yourself.