All the Money in the World|Palazzo dei Congressi, EUR — The Departure Hall That Was Never an Airport

The airport sequence was not shot at an airport. Scott used the Palazzo dei Congressi in EUR, Adalberto Libera's white travertine box south of the city, begun in 1938 for a world's fair that the war cancelled and not finished until 1954. Its central hall is a cube crowned by a cross-vault with no visible supports, forty metres of empty air under a coffered ceiling. Put check-in desks and a 1973 departures board in it and nobody questions the geography.

EUR is where Italian cinema goes when it needs modernity that feels slightly wrong. Antonioni shot L'Eclisse here, Bertolucci The Conformist, and the district has been standing in for airports, ministries and futures since the 1960s. The scale is deliberately inhuman: wide empty avenues, colonnades that go on too long, and the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana — the Square Colosseum — four blocks away with its six rows of six arches.

The building still works as a conference centre, so access depends on what is on. The exterior is the point anyway. Climb the broad staircase on Piazza John Kennedy and stand under the portico of six square pillars.

From the top step, look back along Viale della Civiltà del Lavoro. The avenue runs dead straight for half a kilometre and there is almost never anyone on it.