On Location: Racing Through the Modena of ‘Ferrari’

25.12.2023 - 14:23 / cntraveler.com / Massimo Bottura

Before there was Massimo Bottura, another man ran Modena and his name was Enzo Ferrari. The racing driver-turned-entrepreneur has a name that's instantly recognizable thanks to the automobile company he founded to what we now know to be a great success. But prosperity was neither immediate nor constant for Enzo, and it is with such a period of turbulence in the man's life that the new film Ferrari is concerned. Set in Modena in 1957, Ferrari was filmed almost entirely in the Northern Italian city and its surroundings.

To break down the Italy of Enzo Ferrari's time—the real man rarely left a two-block radius within the city that contained his church, apartment, and barbershop in his free time—we sat down with production designer Maria Djurkovic to talk about beauty, racing past poplar trees, and repurposing dairy factories.

Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) standing before a Ferrari vehicle labeled “Modena."

Where were you working on this film?

We were living and filming and working and everything in Modena. [Director Michael Mann] had visited the city quite a few times over the past 20 years, and he had photographed a lot of locations. Ferrari lived in this small northern Italian town and left. In fact, he rarely left more than this very small portion [of Modena] where he lived. Veracity was very, very important to Michael, not just in getting the historic locations. In terms of getting under the skin of the whole town, being very specific about it being set in Italy—all those little towns in northern Italy are fantastic, you have Ferrara, Verona, Bologna, Milan, they’re all a short drive. It’s very easy.

Actually, Conde Nast Traveler, if you're based in Modena, you can go every weekend somewhere wonderful. Not that we had as many weekends as there were lovely places to go. But still, they vary so radically the character of each of these towns, and in no time you're in Padua or Verona with a drive of an hour and a half or so. It changes totally, the architecture, the food, they all have such different characters. Which is why Michael was keen to be based specifically in Modena. We all lived there. My apartment was actually in the next block from the Ferrari house that you see in the movie. So when I watch the movie, I’m not just remembering making the movie—I’m also thinking, “There’s the road to the local Tesco!” That doesn’t sound very Italian of me.

Before dawn on the day of the Mille Miglia, Ferrari and his racers gathered in the main square of Brescia to sign up to race.

Not the local Tesco!

Luckily, there were markets at the weekend, but when you're working the hours we're working, you have to rely on Tesco too.

Can you take me on a tour of Ferrari’s Modena?

So, the church that Ferrari used to go