ROME - Italy’s Ministry of Culture has revealed the extent to which the country’s economy benefited from the 53 foreign films shot in the peninsula last year.

Financial incentives implemented to entice foreign producers have clearly had great success. Introduced in 2014, a new policy allows production companies to claim a tax rebate of up to 10 million euros on expenses incurred in Italy. Significantly, this means that large-scale productions produced by multiple companies are entitled to save more.

In the 1950s and 60s, Italy was nothing short of a hub of foreign filmmaking. Notable productions filmed in the country include the blockbusters Quo Vadis (1951) and Cleopatra (1963) in addition to Roman Holiday (1953), of course. After this golden age, however, the number of film companies coming from abroad began to dwindle. There were several reasons for this but, speaking to American daily the New York Times, film professor Antonio Monda highlighted Italian hiring quotas and the fact that other European countries, such as Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, began offering low-cost alternatives to production teams.

Fortunately, it looks like Hollywood has finally returned to the Italian peninsula, as scenes Spectre, the latest installment in the Bond franchise, were recently shot in a variety of locations across Rome and work on the remake of the 1959 historical epic Ben-Hur, starring Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman,  is currently underway in the capital’s Cinecittà studios. Filming of the latter could generate up to 50 million euros in Italy’s economy, according to the New York Times.

“We hope [this situation] will continue to improve,” stated Minister for Culture Dario Franceschini.