It’s evening, and the setting sun bathes the arches, columns and pediments of ancient Rome in golden twilight. Dust floats through the light beams cast between the columns, and the air throbs with energy. It was a sticky hot day, and it seems like the night will be even stickier, but that doesn’t stop the crowd, over two thousand strong, from turning out for a hell of a party. Legions of people stretch out in every direction, dancing on forum steps, arms outstretched to the sky, bodies undulating to the beat of the music. This is what Rome does best: a good old fashioned Bacchanalia.
Except that the year is 2022 (A.D.), and I wasn’t in ancient Rome, but in the present day at Cinecittá Studios, the most historic film studio in Europe. Just a stone’s throw to my left was Teatro 5, Fellini’s favorite soundstage. These ruins we danced on weren’t actual ruins, but an abandoned film set from the HBO show Rome. Cinecittá is a site that’s definitely familiar to film buffs, but less frequently visited by the tourist hordes who come to see the city’s well-worn attractions (the Spanish Steps, the Vatican City, Trevi Fountain, so forth). It’s a part of Rome I may not have seen otherwise. And since it was for a pop-up concert with Turkish deejay Carlita, it’s safe to say that this moment, in this location, in this way, may never happen again. On one level, the concert was a “went here, did this” type of tourism experience—I can now say I’ve seen Cinecittá. But on another level, I felt deeply connected to a real slice of contemporary Roman life.
And for me, the whole thing worked. When I travel, I am someone who resents the tyranny of the “10 Things To Do” list. You never get to everything on the list. And even if you do, you invariably meet someone back home who questions why you never got to their specific recommendation.
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So on this recent trip to Rome, when I had the opportunity to visit a one-night-only festival at Cinecittà Studios, I thought, that is something I need to experience. As an average Joe from Boston who has trundled my way through my fare share of European “Must See’s” and “Must Do’s”—and am often, I hate to say it, underwhelmed at best—this was by far one of the coolest things I have ever done. For one night only, it was as if those film sets of ancient Rome had come to life. I experienced a 2022 take on ancient Roman decadence, and the whole thing felt very Decline of Ancient Rome.
The context of how you see something changes the way you see it, and I owe that transcendent Roman evening to the latest production from French music media company Cercle. Founded in 2016 by two Parisian nightlife lovers Derek Barbolla and Philippe Tuchmann, Cercle has built an enormous following on Instagram (1 million followers) and YouTube (2.7 million followers) for its “moments”: events that range in scope and scale, but always include an up-and-coming name from the world of electronic music, and a venue of either historic or natural significance.
These moments have brought Cercle’s act and its adherents around the world, from the Jai Villas Palace in Gwalior, India, to the Château de Chambord in France, to the top of a glacier in Switzerland, to the Pliva Waterfalls in Bosnia and Iguazu Falls in Argentina… you get the idea. Events are announced on social media sometimes with little more than a few weeks’ notice, but invariably sell out within minutes.
The company’s business model could, in fact, be a cure for what ails the music industry, because their momentum is built on the most valuable and nebulous currency of the social media age: hype. By bringing Cercle’s “moments” around the world, there is space not only for the jet set to tag along, but also for locals to experience something cosmopolitan. The issue with returning to legacy festival events year after year such as Coachella, Stagecoach, Lollapalooza, or Burning Man is the expectation that this year’s iteration will live up to or exceed the hype of that of previous years. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t. With Cercle, each event exists in its own universe, telegraphing a confidence that the event has nothing to prove except to itself. You don’t go to a Cercle event because Beyoncé headlined last year or because you saw the right people Instagram from it. You go to a Cercle event because you want to be a part of something cool.
Offering something cool to your guests is what all the global hotel brands are aching for in this moment. Marriott was an early recognizer of Cercle’s impact, and through a partnership between Cercle and its W Hotels brand organized a slate of Cercle events and accompanying W Hotels after-parties this year, with events at the W Goa in India, the W Amman in Jordan, and the newly opened W Rome. Marriott Bonvoy members were able to use points to book Cercle ticket packages and corresponding stays at W Hotels.
A few weeks after the Rome event, Cercle brought the party to Montréal, where they took over the Biosphère Environment Museum–the enormous geodesic globe which inspired Epcot’s iconic Spaceship Earth at Disney World. There is nothing currently announced for 2023, but that’s the way Cercle operates–on short notice, in order to capitalize on social media buzz. The Montréal show, for example, was announced a mere week in advance and, like Rome, sold out in just minutes.
Imagine witnessing: a deejay playing their set at the ruins of Petra without a single live attendee; or in a hot air balloon floating over Cappadocia; or, as I saw in Rome, Europe’s most famous film studio brought to life with a gyrating crowd of 2,500 people. The singularity and specialness of each event makes you see these places in a different, perhaps truer way. And isn’t that, after all, what travel is all about?
Travel is not merely the banality of physically going to a place for the sake of ticking it off the never-ending checklist of “10 things to do.” Travel is a state of mind that opens us up to a world of new possibilities.
And that, if you ask me, is something worth getting on a plane for.
