The Gladiator Fields are so named because this is one of the locations where the 2000 film Gladiator was shot. I’ve never seen this film, but I’ve had it explained that in the movie’s “dream sequence” Russell Crowe’s character, Maximus, stands alone in a field of wheat, allowing the wind to brush the wheat against his palms. Eerie light filters around him as he stands in what is, in this case in the film, quite literally paradise.

At this location, Monte Amiata (Mount Amiata) looms in the background. Mount Amiata is the largest of the lava domes in the Amiata lava dome complex located in the southern Tuscany region.

May 7, 2023