Inferno (1980) is an Italian supernatural horror film written and directed by Dario Argento. It is the second film in Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy, following Suspiria (1977) and later completed by Mother of Tears (2007). The film follows Rose Elliot, a young poet living in New York, after she discovers a book called The Three Mothers and becomes convinced that her apartment building is one of three houses built for ancient and powerful witches. Her brother Mark, a music student in Rome, is drawn into the mystery after receiving her letter, and the story begins to move between New York and Rome as the influence of Mater Tenebrarum spreads through both cities. Irene Miracle, Leigh McCloskey, Eleonora Giorgi, Daria Nicolodi, Sacha Pitoëff, Alida Valli and Veronica Lazar appear in the cast. Like Suspiria, the film is less concerned with realistic plotting than with atmosphere, colour, architecture, murder set pieces and occult dread, creating a dreamlike horror world of libraries, submerged rooms, old apartment buildings and hidden witchcraft.
Inferno was filmed mainly in Rome and New York, with much of the production built around studio-controlled interiors in Rome and selected real locations used to give the film its divided-city structure. In Rome, the Quartiere Coppedè provides one of the film’s most distinctive exterior locations, with Piazza Mincio used when Sara arrives at the library. The library interior was filmed at Biblioteca Angelica, one of Rome’s historic libraries, where Sara searches for the book connected to the Three Mothers before descending into the darker basement world beneath it. Via Dora and the surrounding Coppedè streets are used as she flees after the library sequence, while Via Po 22 appears as the apartment building connected to Sara and the later murder material. The aula magna of the Ospedale odontoiatrico George Eastman was used for the music-class setting where Mark studies in Rome. New York gives the film its other major identity, especially through Central Park. The Pond and the area around Gapstow Bridge are used for the scene where Kazanian is attacked and killed after attempting to drown a bag of cats, turning a familiar Manhattan park location into one of the film’s strangest and most grotesque death scenes. Although the story is split between New York and Rome, Inferno feels less like a conventional travel film than a constructed occult map: real Roman libraries, Coppedè architecture, apartment façades and Central Park landscapes are combined with studio-built corridors, flooded rooms, staircases and supernatural interiors to create the sense of two cities secretly linked by the same ancient evil.
Biblioteca Angelica
Biblioteca Angelica is in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Il segno del comando, Inferno, Angels & Demons, A Liberal Passion, It’s All About Karma and more.
Piazza Mincio
Piazza Mincio and the buildings directly facing it have appeared in The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), The Omen (1976), Inferno (1980) and many other movies.