In impoverished post-war Rome, a gang of young thieves is lead by Stefano, the son of an illustrious professor. The police suspects that the criminals are actually university students; inspector Mariani, a young World War II veteran, enrolls and tries to find out more. He falls for a pretty fellow student, Luisa, but she is the sister of the gang leader...

Three girls are on a hitchhiking trip through northern Italy, the riviera, Venice, Pisa and Rome.

A young and shy girl Celestina arrives from her small home village to Rome to become a housemaid. Her inexperience and naivety causes her to change her employers quite frequently. As she is moving from one family to another she makes friends with other Roman maids and falls desperately in love with a handsome plumber Fernando. But Fernando isn't telling Celestina that he is already engaged to another woman.

Paolo Anselmi is a happily single man. He lives in a flat with a friend but is forced to leave when the friend gets married. He then goes to a boarding house where he flirts with a girl but ditches her when she proposes marriage. When he goes and visits his mother he finds out that she is also trying to find the right girl for him. Is he going to surrender this time?

Dora, driven away from her town by malicious gossip following her first love affair, has a series of short-lived adventures until she falls in love with Nino, a small time crook. In Parma, a police officer courts her but she keeps thinking of Nino.

A woman in her thirties is a single mother of a teenager daughter, and both are in love with the same young soldier. Mother sacrifices herself for Maricchia's marriage, but ultimately falls to her own passion, leading to family disruption.

Francesca and Sandro meet, falls for each other and get married. But the differences between them are too many and the separation is around the corner.

An old prince lives in his ancient palace in Rome together with the ghosts of his ancestors. For years he has proudly rejected huge offers by a real estate group seeking to buy the palace and build a department store in its place, but when he suddenly dies his nephew signs the deal. The palace seems lost, but the ghosts forge a plan to save it from destruction.

In Pompeii in the year 79, Lycias and Helen fall in love. Helen's guardian, the high priest of Isis, wants to separate them. To do so, he tries to make Lycias drink a love potion, but a young slave threatens to reveal everything. The high priest, unable to silence her, kills her and arranges to have Lycias accused...

Certain that "the right man" is crucial to her escaping the confines of the Italian village where she lives, Pina places an ad in the newspaper. She gets a response from Adolfo, who agrees to travel from his residence in Rome to visit her. As flashbacks shed light on both their pasts, suspense builds about how they will relate to one another.