Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.

Just out of jail, rumpled English archaeologist Arthur reconnects with his wayward crew of tombaroli accomplices – a happy-go-lucky collective of itinerant grave-robbers who survive by looting Etruscan tombs and fencing the ancient treasures they dig up.

The wealthy businessman Vincenzo realizes that he is a father too absent, but also that his two sons and 1aughter are spoiled and unable to support themselves economically. So Vincenzo stages their fraudulent bankruptcy and runs with their children in Taranto, in his old house. The boys are struggling to settle, but Vincenzo is confident about them and hope that they will soon find a job in the city. Meanwhile, an impostor blackmailer, who wants to marry the daughter of Vincenzo, arrives in Puglia, to expose the scam.

In autumn of 1526, the Emperor, Charles V, sends his German landsknechts led by Georg von Frundsberg to march towards Rome. The inferior papal armies, commanded by Giovanni de'Medici, try to chase them in the midst of a harsh winter. Nevertheless, the Imperial armies manage to cross the rivers along their march and get cannons thanks to the maneuvers of its Lords. In a skirmish, Giovanni de'Medici is wounded in the leg by a falconet shot. The attempts to cure him fail and he dies. The Imperial armies assault Rome. The film is beautifully but unassumingly set, and shows the hard conditions in which war is waged and its lack of glory. It ends straightforwardly with the declaration made after the death of Giovanni de'Medici by the commanders of the armies in Europe of not using again fire weapons because of their cruelty.

When the family patriarch is murdered, seven women find themselves trapped together in his mansion to solve the mystery.