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Bella Vita

Many men have fallen for Ghost Rider's Eva Mendes.
Unfortunately for them, her heart is already taken - by Rome.


Photographs by Don Flood
Lettering by Darren Booth

EVA MENDES saw Rome first with a guide and then with friends. But Mendes discovered the best parts of the city - and herself, she says - when she got lost, wandering through the rain, disappearing down side streets, being ready for anything and open to everything. "I really found myself there," she says. "I'm not throwing that away or saying it lightly; I really did some major soul-searching and soul-finding there. It was just magical."  Mendes is a Los Angeles girl, but the lure of the Eternal City was so strong that she went there once for vacation and then again to experience the city as a local. In the future, she says, she wants to live there. Not that she's abandoning Hollywood just yet. After her breakout role alongside Oscar winner ­Denzel Washington in the 2001 film Training Day and her head-turning role in the 2005 romantic comedy Hitch, starring Will Smith, Mendes is back on the big screen with this month's Ghost Rider (an adaptation of the Marvel Comics series), which stars Nicolas Cage as the titular antihero.  But her spirit remains in Rome. Here's how it got there.