Presented in preview at the Rome Film Festival, the new TV series ChiaroScuro, starring Pierpaolo Spollon and Andrea Lattanzi, was immediately dubbed a light crime on the art world: at the heart of eight episodes are mysterious murders in which the corpses are arranged in poses that imitate the great classics of painting, and the investigation is conducted by an eccentric art expert.
The locations of ChiaroScuro themselves also celebrate the idea of beauty that seems to unite everyone: victims, perpetrators, institutions. Available on Netflix from November 11 2026, the series was shot in museums and art galleries among the most prestigious and frequented on an international level, monuments that make Italian artistic heritage one of the most envied in the world, modern architectures and other corners of a beauty that lasts forever.
What it’s about
The director of the National Gallery of Rome is found dead inside the main hall: his body lies on the floor in a position that echoes the figures in Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Jael and Sisera”, and the painting itself has, of course, been stolen. The case is pursued by Inspector Angelo Tiberi (Andrea Lattanzi). Without much luck, it must be said, so he is forced to reluctantly turn to the help of Cosmo Speranza (Pierpaolo Spollon): one of the best art advisors currently on the market, endowed with an “absolute eye” that allows him to identify in seconds the distinctive features of the paintings before him and, of course, whether they are genuine works or fakes. His contribution will be fundamental in identifying a serial killer whose modus operandi is precisely to imitate the arrangement of the corpses in the great masterpieces of art, even if this will force him to grapple again with the mysterious death of his father (Alessandro Preziosi): a well-known forger.
Where the series was filmed
The main locations of ChiaroScuro are in Rome. As the director, Jan Maria Michelini, has explained on several occasions, the intention was not to tell the city’s “postcard city” that everyone knows, but a city that is lived, walked through, everyday in which iconic places such as the Pantheon or the Fontanone del Gianicolo appear almost by chance, just as it happens every day in the lives of many Romans.
The Roman museums
Many scenes were shot inside Roman museums, and in the end one could hardly expect otherwise from a crime series about the art world. The key scene of the discovery of the first corpse was shot, as mentioned, inside the National Gallery of Modern Art and Contemporary Art in Rome: just outside Villa Borghese, the GNAMC houses the most important collection of Italian and foreign 19th-century art and masterpieces such as Monet’s “Pink Water Lilies”, Klimt’s “The Three Ages”, Miró’s “The Birthday of the Lovers”.
Other scenes were shot inside the MAXXI: the National Museum of 21st Century Arts, housed in the futuristic former Montello barracks (in the Flaminio district). There are also scenes filmed at the MACRO: the Museum of Contemporary Art located near Porta Pia.
Other Roman museums used for the shoot include Palazzo Barberini with its precious collection of ancient art, the Museum of the Etruscans at Villa Giulia and the Villa Medici complex, today home to the French Academy (on Monte Pincio).
Even the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro (ICR) and the Laboratories of the Teatro dell’Opera of Rome served as stages for the new Netflix series in a sort of homage to the protagonist, Cosmo, and to his sensitivity toward study and artistic research.
The center of Rome
Aside from museums, numerous views of Rome appear in the series’ frames. The loft where Cosmo lives enjoys a splendid view of the Circo Massimo.
From Ancient Rome in the shots of the new Netflix light-crime series you can also glimpse the Baths of Caracalla, the Imperial Forums and the Colosseum, the Theatre of Marcellus and the Portico d’Ottavia, Piazza della Bocca della Verità with its crowd of tourists drawn by the legends surrounding the iconic marble mask.
In the city center, the Pantheon, the Trinità dei Monti, Via del Corso, Via Veneto and Piazza della Repubblica with the lively Galleria Esedra stand out. The lungotevere and the island of Tiberina are part of the imagery repertoire that makes the story told by the new Netflix series with Pierpaolo Spollon and Andrea Lattanzi a tale that could have taken place only in Rome and nowhere else.
The Fontana dell’Acqua Paola at the Gianicolo – better known to Romans as the “fontanone del Gianicolo” – also peeks in several shots.
Other Roman locations
There is also a much more everyday Rome that accompanies the life – and, in a few fortunate cases, the mysterious deaths – of its inhabitants among the locations of ChiaroScuro. It is the Rome of the Pigneto: one of the popular districts that in recent years has undergone redevelopment and rediscovery by students and young workers who animate its venues every evening.
In one of the promotional images of the series distributed by Netflix, the Gazometro is easily recognizable: a metal structure in the Ostiense area that was once the largest gasometer in Italy.
Speaking of modern and industrial-style architecture, for some it may not be hard to recognize on screen the so-called “Lanterna” by Fuksas: the self-supporting glass roof that crowns the Palazzo dell’Unione Militare.
Also decidedly modern is the layout of the Parish Church of the God the Merciful Father, better known as the Jubilee Church, where one of the funerals in the series takes place.
To follow the character of Andrea Lattanzi, a police officer of humble origins who grew up in a working-class area, the production also ventured to shoot in Tor Tre Teste, a district on the eastern outskirts of Rome.
Formello
Just outside Rome, among the locations used is Formello. In this village immersed in the greenery of the Veio Regional Park, where abundant testimonies of the area’s Etruscan past and productions (the most recent being Doc – Nelle tue mani) are found, the police station and other interiors were reconstructed.
Bomarzo, the Monster Park
Among the exterior scenes, there are numerous shots at the Monster Park of Bomarzo: not far from the Capital, with its mysterious grotesque bas-relief masks, the Sacred Grove has an atmosphere of suspense that naturally evokes the Netflix series.
