A single concrete block runs almost a kilometre above open farmland on the edge of the city.
What Corviale looks like
Corviale is a single nine storey block running almost a kilometre along , with a shorter block running parallel beside it. A third section, turned at a forty-five degree angle, forms the building's east end. Built between 1975 and 1984, the main block's raw exposed concrete rises nine floors above an underground parking level. Cylindrical stair towers break the facade at intervals, and the same window bay repeats the full length of the building.
An asphalt access road is the only street here, running past the building's base with open farmland on both sides. There is no grid of side streets or intersections, only the one road and the fields beyond it.
Graffiti covers much of the ground floor, and parked cars line the access road beneath the upper storeys. Inside, the corridors run as covered balconies with potted plants and trellises, connecting to plain concrete stairwells marked with painted directional signs.
The Tenuta dei Massimi nature reserve, farmland and oak woods, borders the site to the west. A public bus stop sits directly against the building's base, the only stop on the access road.
Shot in Corviale
The Sky series Christian uses Corviale's concrete facade as its main setting across both seasons, composited with the separate Vigne Nuove complex for the fictional Citta Palazzo. The film American Assassin used for one of its scenes, and Paolo Virzi's Siccita and Francesco Lettieri's Lovely Boy both shot against the exterior facades, the latter for an in story music video staged in the open fields facing it. The Sky Atlantic series The Iris Affair also used the exterior as a character's base.
Christian, 2022
Corviale
Christian uses the building's unbroken concrete length as the main location across both seasons, standing in for the series' fictional housing estate. Shots of the facade are composited with the separate Vigne Nuove complex to build the fictional Citta Palazzo. Street View
Lovely Boy, 2021
Lovely Boy stages an in story music video shoot in the open fields that face the Serpentone's long facade. The building fills the background of the scene rather than appearing as a separate location. Street View
What Corviale can double for
Les Courtillieres in Pantin, France
Les Courtillieres is a curving concrete housing block about a kilometre and a half long, built across the 1950s and 1960s, and architectural sources already group it with Corviale as one of Europe's longest residential buildings. The serpentine facade was painted blue on the outside and pink inside, so Corviale's raw grey concrete needs a colour pass to match it on camera. The facade's paint and the serpentine curve are the two differences a wide shot would show, so a straight, tightly framed section of Corviale avoids both. Try searching curving concrete housing block now.
Park Hill is a single raw concrete housing estate built across the late 1950s and into the 1960s, with open access decks, called streets in the sky, running the length of each block. Corviale has no equivalent decks, so a frame that includes them would need dressing or a different angle entirely. Film the plain stretches of Corviale's facade away from its balconies and stairwells, where the two buildings read closer. Try searching streets in the sky now.
Cite Radieuse in Marseille, France
The Cite Radieuse is a single raised concrete block about 135 metres long, a fifth of Corviale's own length, built in the early 1950s on the same raw concrete lines. A tight frame on one section of facade can pass for the other, but a wide or aerial shot gives away the size difference immediately. Avoid any shot that shows the building's full length or its ground level pilotis, which Corviale does not have. Try searching raised concrete block now.
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