Giuseppe Pitrè was an ethnologist who collected documents pertaining to Sicily and its culture and traditions. His work is the basis for this documentary, which unites live footage, drawings, and archival documents.

We learn about Pitrè's life, and his relationship to the sea.

In this segment, we see some swordfish harpoon fishing, and hear an old Sicilian legend about a boy named Nicola who could stay underwater for a very long time.

Pitrè's life was marked by a sort of travelling storyteller tradition in his family. In those days, a cuntastorie (storyteller) would go around to all the piazzas and tell stories, and people would pay to hear them.

This segment focuses on an actor who retells and acts out stories from Sicily's past, speaking in Sicilian dialect. He uses the Pitrè Museum as a source for material. The museum houses a manuscript with over 4,000 Sicilian proverbs, just one of the many volumes of Sicilian ethnographic material.

Pitrè's mission was to conserve and safeguard the traditions of his people, the Sicilians, and to keep the roots alive. Looking at religious traditions is one important way to do this.

Saint Rosalia (1130–1166), recognized by her crown of roses, is Palermo's patron saint. The video shows the July 14 parade in honor of the saint, and a young man who credits his cure from a grave illness to Saint Rosalia.

The segment concentrates on the richness of the Sicilian dialect, a dialect which is less and less spoken. The narrator interviews two poets who recite their works in Sicilian, providing insights into the language.

Giuseppe Pitrè received his degree in medicine in 1865. His patients, among Palermo's poorest, provided him with a wealth of ethnographic material.

A woman performs a traditional Sicilian ritual involving the sticking of pins into an onion, accompanied by prayers, in order to bring back the boyfriend of her suppliant.

Giuseppe Pitrè loved attending performances of chivalric folk plays in Palermo. This segment follows a marionette player at Palermo's Opera dei Pupi, the same theater where Pitrè went to see folk epics.

Palermo faces the sea and has a very long history of immigration. The narrator interviews a young woman whose great grandfather came to Sicily from Sudan. She is involved in educating immigrants from Africa and Asia. Pitrè was also highly involved in education.

A Palermo doctor is interviewed about his practice and the African and Southeast Asian immigrant patients that he treats.

A Palermo doctor discusses the Integration of immigrants in Sicily and highlights the successes in healthcare. Medical assistance is provided for all immigrants, whether lawful or not.

The documentary comes to a close with an interview regarding a prison cell used during the Inquisition. The cell bears the graffiti of its inmates. Pitrè had laboriously uncovered the graffiti, but it was only rediscovered in the 1970s by the writer Leonardo Sciascia and the interviewee in this segment, Giuseppe Quatriglio, who used Pitrè's writing to find it.

In World War I, Italians who up until then had spoken their regional dialects, found themselves fighting side by side against a common enemy. But Mussolini was interested in fighting the internal enemy.

The nineteen twenties ushered in sound in cinema. Italy's L.U.C.E. [L'Unione Cinematografica Educativa or Educational Film Union] was founded in 1924 and generated the fascist regime's cinematic propaganda.

Soon after the introduction of talkies, dubbing came about in the thirties. Dubbing was extremely popular in Italy and remains so today.

Schools in fascist Italy banned the study of dialects and moved to using standardized textbooks. The fascist hymn “Viva Adua nostra” refers to a battle won by the Kingdom of Italy in 1896 near Adwa, Ethiopia.

This segment opens with a sort of poem, demonstrating how kids growing up in fascist Italy were expected to behave. Minority groups had a pretty hard time, too.

Mussolini inveighs against the middle class, saying that it is the enemy of fascism. Much of the footage in this segment features EUR, the Rome district that was built in the 30s and 40s.

The segment looks at the Royal Academy of Italy's dictionary of Italian, which was filled with quotes from Mussolini. By the end of World War II, the dictionary had gotten to the letter “C.”

After the war came TV. It changed everything, and provided a new way to unify the Italian language and teach people reading and writing.

The narrator goes over the vanishingly small number of expressions coined during Mussolini's time that are still in use today. The song that gives the series its name is provided in full.