Rome — City of Light

The Project Story

Flying a drone over the Colosseum is not something anyone lets you do.

This was not a commissioned project. It was an obsession. Sean and a three-person crew spent seven days in Rome capturing the Eternal City from the air — flying over monuments that have stood for over two thousand years. The Colosseum. The Pantheon. St. Peter's Basilica. Structures so significant that even getting permission to fly near them requires months of preparation.

It took three months to secure the permits. Every piazza in Rome has stationary police, military, and carabinieri. Even with permits in hand, every flight was interrupted — officers approaching, credentials checked, authorisations verified. At every corner, the same conversation. At every takeoff, the same tension. Flying a drone above irreplaceable two-thousand-year-old monuments is a responsibility that never lets you relax.

But the footage was worth every minute of stress. What emerged was a cinematic portrait of Rome that most people will never see — the geometry of the Colosseum from directly above, the light hitting the Tiber at dawn, the symmetry of piazzas designed centuries ago revealed only from the air.

The footage has since been licensed by the City of Rome for an international convention, used in an Audi campaign, sold to high-end production firms worldwide, and featured in a Netflix documentary. What started as a personal project became one of the most widely distributed pieces of aerial cinematography BTL Media has ever produced.