Six vignettes follow the Allied invasion from July 1943 to winter 1944, from Sicily north to Venice.
Casanova, a young patriot in 18th-century Sicily, upon learning that his father and sister have been murdered, returns to Palermo and engages in guerilla tactics against the forces of the Governor. Lady Bianca, the Governor's daughter, is in love with one of the patriots, Lorenzo, and desires to escape from the palace. Her lady-in-waiting, Zanetta, enlists the aid of Casanova and he rescues them and takes them to the partisan's camp. The rebels are victorious. Lady Bianca makes plans to marry Lorenzo, and Casanova and Zanetta have similar plans.
In rural Sicily, the fishermen live at the mercy of the greedy wholesalers. One family risks everything to buy their own boat and operate independently.
Sicily, Granitola, 1955. At the first light of dawn, the fishermen set out in their boats for open water, timing the rhythm of their oars to murmured chants. They set their nets in the sea, regulate the cords, organize the boats in a square. The men’s work becomes increasingly harder as the tuna are hoisted onto the boats, wriggling, beating their tails until death arrives and the water is tinged with blood.
When the first manned flight to Venus returns to Earth, the rocket crash-lands in the Mediterranean near a small Italian fishing village. The locals manage to save one of the astronauts Colonel Calder, the mission commander. A young boy also recovers what turns out to be a specimen of an alien creature. Growing at a fantastic rate, it manages to escape and eventually threatens the city of Rome.
Syracuse lies between the warring nations of Rome and Carthage; as long as the balance of power between the nations remains intact, both nations are willing to preserve the neutrality of Syracuse. However, Rome has now gotten the upper hand in its struggle for power. The fate of Syracuse lies in the hands of its leader, the famed inventor and scientist Archimedes.
Ferdinando Cefalù is desperate to marry his cousin, Angela, but he is married to Rosalia and divorce is illegal in Italy. To get around the law, he tries to trick his wife into having an affair so he can catch her and murder her, as he knows he would be given a light sentence for killing an adulterous woman. He persuades a painter to lure his wife into an affair, but Rosalia proves to be more faithful than he expected.
Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano's bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon the scene, hoping to crack open the true story behind the death of this young man, who, at the age of twenty-seven, had already become Italy’s most wanted criminal and celebrated hero.
When the men of a Sicilian village start obsessing over ravishing blonde midwife Jessica, angry females revolt by refusing to have sex with their husbands. As the local priest tries to encourage procreation, Jessica falls for a tricky recluse.
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
Two fearful and incapable individuals, Ciccio and Franco, are tasked by the leader of the Sicilian Mafia to travel to Milan to sell a large batch of wine. At first they have little luck, but soon they notice one of their competitors having great success using beautiful women to push their product. They adopt this model aggressively, but the women they hire end up enjoying so much success that their husbands become concerned and suspicious of their activities.
A rich, jet-setting playboy has a secret life: he's also a professional Mafia hitman. When he decides it's time to retire from that life, he finds that his former employers don't like the idea that someone who knows so much about them won't be under their control anymore, and decide to send their own hitmen to eliminate him.
World War II soldiers enter Sicily to seize German arms supply only to discover there is not a gun in sight.
Doctor Gaudenzi, a real Sicilian manly man living in Rome, Italy, married the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. One day, his wife is about to die, and being very religious, she asks for a cardinal to perform the last rites and further demands that her husband pledges not to marry or be with other women after she dies. Constrained by the cardinal's presence, Gaudenzi promises, and she promptly dies. Later, as soon as he is about to fall in temptation when looking at sexy girls, strange things happen, finally convincing him that his jealous wife is watching from "out there". Gaudenzi decides to give up on his lusty life: he's returning to his Sicily home and, to be on the sure side, he asks to be injected with female hormones. That's when he meets a sexy woman no man can resist...
The revolt of the people of a Sicilian village further to the Expedition of the Thousand which, in 1860, enables Garibaldi to liberate Sicily.
Voting against the Mafia in what he thinks is a secret ballot costs Sicilian laborer Mimi his livelihood. He leaves his wife, flees to Turin and romances a Communist organizer - but he just can’t shake the Mafia. When they lure Mimi back to Sicily with a better job, he must keep his lover – and love child – under wraps. That’s when his wife announces she’s pregnant.
When the godson of San Francisco's crime lord asks permission to leave "the business," Don Antonio agrees, but reluctantly. Such behavior by either one is a violation of the code, and a bloody mob war breaks out. It is only through the strong support of his family connections in Sicily that Don Antonio is able to survive the mêlée and come out on top. Aghast at the situation he has caused, the godson becomes his leader's "consigliere," or Counselor at Crime.
A young couple become embroiled with the personal problems of another couple on a yacht moored off Sicily during a turbulent weekend of fun, games, sex games, betrayal, spouse abuse, and murder.
Sicily, Fascist Italy, 1925. Dictator Benito Mussolini appoints Cesare Mori, a man as tough as he is honest, as the new police prefect of Palermo and entrusts him with the arduous task of putting an end to the Mafia, a sinister criminal organization that has sown terror on the island for centuries.
Two friends grow up together in the Sicily of the '50s. Two different destiny, two different way of life. Could their friendship survive to the mafia shadow?