Gabriele D'Annunzio - poet, novelist, playwright, journalist, soldier and politician - shaped Italian artistic, political and military life either side of 1900. Filmed entirely at the Vittoriale degli Italiani, the hillside citadel above Lake Garda where he spent his final years, the documentary moves through the house, the archive, the park, the amphitheatre and the mausoleum. Giordano Bruno Guerri, president of the Vittoriale foundation, leads a chaptered account of D'Annunzio's writing, his affairs, his politics and his military exploits, closing on his uneasy relationship with Mussolini, who admired and feared him in equal measure.
