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Destination: Rome

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Video: Pope John Paul II Celebrates Christmas One Last Time

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas.

A highlight for our crew was filming the Midnight Mass at the Vatican on Christmas Eve in 2004 — which happened to be Pope John Paul II’s last Christmas. The vast basilica was packed, the pope seemed radiant, and our cameraman put our viewers right in the front pew.

The Vatican is generally a very difficult place for visiting film crews to get permission to do anything. But for some reason, their welcome warmed at Christmas, and we found ourselves with a prime spot in the center of St. Peters — midway up the central pilaster, under Michelangelo’s magnificent dome, with a front-balcony perch to catch the action. In this extra, you’ll see just a bit more of Pope John Paul II’s final Christmas Mass.

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Video: Italian Manger Scenes

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas.

A wonderful tradition in Italy is churches and communities making creative manger scenes and putting them on display through the Christmas season. These presepi, as manger scenes are called in Italy, originated 800 years ago just north of Rome, in Assisi. St. Francis was a master at teaching Bible lessons with clever props, and he figured out that a manger scene helped people relate to the Christmas message more vividly. Ever since then, the Baby Jesus has been shown on his day of birth in a humble setting, in local scenes that have not a hint of Bethlehem: an Italian setting for Italian viewers (or an Arctic scene for Eskimos) to connect more intimately with the story of the Nativity.

In Rome, it was a Bethlehem home show, as all over town creative crèches were on display. Here’s a collection of some of our favorites — ranging from holy to homemade to mod to igloos.

 

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Behind the Scenes: Filming Christmas in Italy

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas. Today we travel to Italy.

In Rome, from Piazza Navona’s Christmas market to the ultimate manger scene in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, the city was bursting with Christmas traditions. The highlight was filming the Midnight Mass at the Vatican on Christmas Eve — which happened to be Pope John Paul II’s last Christmas.

One of my favorite guides in all of Europe is Roberto Bechi (who has taught and inspired our tour groups and guidebook readers visiting his Tuscan hometown of Siena for more than twenty years). Roberto worked his wonders and, with his connections, he had sacred music and prayer infusing the tranquil Italian landscape with the spirit of Christmas. With his help, we filmed living nativities recreating the town of Bethlehem in idyllic towns.

The logistics of this shoot were tricky. While it seemed we were everywhere on Christmas, we only actually shot Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Rome and in Salzburg. (Other “Christmas” celebrations you see were staged for our cameras a few days before the real thing.) And I was never actually on camera in England, France, or Italy. You’ll notice throughout that I established myself in each of those countries with “on-cameras” that could pass for those places. For example, the shot of me “in Rome” was actually in front of the cathedral of Salzburg, which was designed to be a one-quarter-scale knock-off of St. Peter’s — but in Austria. Forgive me, Father…for I have deceived.

 

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The Story of Fascism: The City of Mussolini’s Dreams

If Hitler and Mussolini had won, our world might look like the E.U.R., a futuristic city Mussolini built at the edge of Rome.

https://www.facebook.com/ricksteves/videos/1028831323943134/

 

This clip is excerpted from my new one-hour special “Rick Steves’ The Story of Fascism in Europe.” Check your local listings for air times — and if you don’t see it, please ask your public television station to add it to their schedule.

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The Story of Fascism: Mussolini’s Rise to Power

Mussolini loved big rallies. From his balcony, he whipped his followers into a mass frenzy — igniting a new, amped-up kind of nationalism.

https://www.facebook.com/ricksteves/videos/749219152093142/

 

This clip is excerpted from my new one-hour special “Rick Steves’ The Story of Fascism in Europe.” Check your local listings for air times — and if you don’t see it, please ask your public television station to add it to their schedule.