[3] The film was shot over the course of 232 days from 10 August 1936 to 29 March 1937, near Sabaudia with 12.6 million lira invested by the Italian government.

[9] On 10 June 1936, Giacomo Paulucci, president of ENIC, asked Ildebrando Pizzetti to compose the film's score.

The score was completed by spring 1937, and Pizzetti performed one of its songs before Benito Mussolini on 28 April in Cinecittà using the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma.

Mussolini considered adopting Pizzetti's Inno a Roma as the national anthem of Italy according to Luigi Freddi.

Bosley Crowther, writing in The New York Times, stated that "there are moments in the film when one feels that it is not so much the noble days of Republican Rome that one is witnessing as the last act of Aida".

[14] Time's review of the film stated that it "is also as spectacular a show as the movies have seen since the Italian Quo Vadis first made the U.S.