“Conclave” production design based on the Sistine Chapel at Cinecitta

[Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for “Conclave.”]

Tucked away in a warehouse in Rome’s Cinecittá complex, you’d otherwise have to pay €20 to see it in person: Europe’s largest film studio has a collection of painted apartments that together form a replica of the Sistine Chapel. But for “Conclave” production designer Suzie Davies, recreating the Vatican environments was never the end goal. It was just the beginning.

For one thing, Davies wanted to optimize the layout of the chapel (and the painted apartment she was able to take with her from this warehouse) so that the Sistine Chapel would appear more political in the film. That meant adjusting the seating of the College of Cardinals so that they faced each other, like a twisted, gilded session of Congress. “We built up to 10 meters, and the other 10 meters is a set extension. But our painters have painted a good portion of them and they are exceptional,” said Davies. “We slightly changed what it really is and just rebuilt everything.”

Another complete building was the Casa Santa Marta, which houses the cardinals for the titular conclave to elect a new pope. Davies wanted it to feel anonymously imposing and oppressive, almost like an asylum despite all the grandeur. This meant using every inch of the film stage to create very specific dimensions.

“I wanted to suck out all the air [the Casa Santa Marta] so that you can just hear the hum of the fluorescent lamps and the ticking of the air conditioning. And there was no natural light; nothing lives there. I built the longest corridor I could,” Davies said. “Everything was a little lower because everything in the rest of the Vatican is open and there are these huge, amazing 20 meter high ceilings. So the Casa comes across in our widescreen format in a way that just feels so beautiful when you look at it. It says, ‘Are you being watched? Are you watching?’ kind of feeling.”

The courtly intrigue is aided and abetted by Casa Santa Marta’s fine materials, from the marble floors and walls to the chic coffee machines. But all of this was also manufactured. “All the marble on the floor is hand-painted. It’s just panels of MDF and plywood that have been painted and glazed to give that marble effect, and the same goes for the walls too,” said Davies. “It’s about the collaboration of all the different, amazing craftsmen and people in the department doing their part.”

From the painters and graphics team who figured out the optimal patterns hold From the sheen and smoothness of the marble during filming to the set designers finding just the right props to interpret as a bulk purchase from the Vatican, every inch of Casa Santa Marta was tested to ensure it was one inherently stressful space. “With all that flatness and shifting, it’s a bit like an Escher painting to create different worlds,” Davies said.

Davies is no stranger to creating posh prisons, having crafted the crass and conceited millennial excess in Saltburn. But she told IndieWire that the key to excitement on the set of “Conclave” is restraint. “We wanted not Cover it,” Davies said. “I think part of the job of a designer is knowing when not to do something [something] and when you should let the locations work for you. As much as you think, ‘Well, I have to do everything,’ sometimes you don’t.”

The changes Davies makes to the ecclesiastical settings are made with emotional resonance in mind, particularly in her interpretation of the Room of Tears, where Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) has a final conversation and confrontation with the newly elected Pope Innocent. It is a relatively small room located under the Sistine Chapel and not many people have the opportunity to visit the actual site. However, there are images available showing it to be whitewashed with a painted ceiling. In Davies’ design for Conclave, however, it is low and red and warm – almost womb-like, for reasons that become clear as the scene progresses.

“We had so many options for how we wanted to design the Room of Tears and everything was so bright white. We were never white. And it was just like, ‘No, let’s paint it red because it’s the uterus; it is the heart; it is the life force.’ So we found one of the most amazing places in Rome – it’s actually one of the Pope’s old farmhouses, which is now a kind of run-down museum,” said Davies.

The production team did what film crews do. They painted the place, polished the floors, added some gilding, and emphasized the lower ceilings, giving this “Room of Tears” an extremely human feel – in direct contrast to all the other large or sterile rooms in the film.

“I love that we got red there,” Davies said. “I think it keeps you in that room with the characters.”