In Media
The apartment that was the setting for The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1961) is halfway up on the right. Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged (1998) is also set in a house next to the steps.
The Bob Dylan song "When I Paint My Masterpiece," first recorded in 1971 by The Band and later appearing on the album "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II," mentions both the "Spanish Stairs" and the Colosseum. Norwegian singer/songwriter Morten Harket, from A-ha, released a song called "Spanish Steps" on his album Wild Seed in 1995.
Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn, made the Spanish Steps famous to an American audience.
On 16 January, 2008, Graziano Cecchini, an Italian artist, covered the steps with hundreds of thousands of multicolored plastic balls. He claimed that it was done to make the world notice the situation of the Karen people in Myanmar, and as a protest against the conditions of artists in Italy.
On the 9th November, 2009 to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a multi-media event was held on the steps which included the erection of replicas of parts of the wall.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Steps
Famous quotes containing the word media:
“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)