Cinecittà Studios (; Italian for Cinema City Studios), is a large film studio in Rome, Italy. With an area of 400,000 square metres (99 acres), it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios were constructed during the Fascist era as part of a plan to revive the Italian film industry. Filmmakers such as Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Mel Gibson have worked at Cinecittà. More than 3,000 movies have been filmed there, of which 90 received an Academy Award nomination and 47 of these won it. In the 1950s, the number of international productions being made there led to Rome being dubbed "Hollywood on the Tiber." History The studios were founded in 1937 by Benito Mussolini, his son Vittorio, and his head of cinema Luigi Freddi under the slogan "Il cinema è l'arma più forte" ("Cinema is the most powerful weapon"). The purpose was not only for propaganda, but also to support the recovering Italian feature film industry, which had reached its low point in 1931. Mussolini himself inaugurated the studios on 21 April 1937. Post-production units and sets were constructed and heavily used initially. Early films such as Scipio Africanus (1937) and The Iron Crown (1941) showcased the technological advancement of the studios. Seven thousand people were involved in the filming of the battle scene from Scipio Africanus, and live elephants were brought in as a part of the re-enactment of the Battle of Zama. The studios were bombed by the Western Allies during the bombing of Rome in World War II. Following the war, between 1945 and 1947, the studios of Cinecittà were used as a displaced persons' camp for a period of about two years, following German occupation and Allied bombing that destroyed parts of the studio. An estimated 3,000 refugees lived there, divided into two camps: an Italian camp housing Italians as well as displaced people from Italian Libya and Dalmatia, and an international camp, including refugees from Yugoslavia, Poland, Egypt, Iran, and China. After rebuilding in the postwar years, the studios were used once again for their post-production facilities. In the 1950s, Cinecittà, described as Hollywood on the Tiber, was the location for several large American film productions, like Roman Holiday (1953), Beat the Devil (1953), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Ben-Hur (1959), and some