Italy, so much of the time, feels like precious preservation. Like a face that ages yet also stays the same. I have to imagine it’s a shared compulsiveness to wander around, piecing together the abundance of left-over context clues, wondering about the people and things any given place has seen.

The spots below are such clues for 1960s Italy, or the Dolce Vita era, a time of pleasure and grandeur. The war was over, the economy was booming, and the country had found a new lust for life. It was a period of progress and pleasure, imaginably marked by Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning film, La Dolce Vita. As Anita Ekberg took her iconic dip in the Trevi Fountain, audiences marveled and a new lifestyle was born.