We get a look at the plaster casts of Roman and Greek statues in the French Academy's storage rooms, sculptures such as the Venus de Milo. Fellows have made use of these casts to draw inspiration for their own works.

The segment focuses on Messalina, wife of the Emperor Claudius, who owned a villa on the site of Villa Medici. We catch a glimpse of tunnels and rooms beneath the villa, which were used by Ferdinando de' Medici to imprison Asian slaves when they weren't at work on a garden meant to evoke Mount Parnassus.

We visit the French Academy's gallery devoted to plaster casts of antique sculptures and the large park, which was once used by Ferdinando de' Medici for hunting.

The segment concentrates on two richly frescoed rooms that are set apart from the villa. Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici used these secluded rooms for trysts.

Éric de Chassey, Director of the French Academy, details the mission of the institution.

Giuliano Montaldo tells about how he got his start, from being a ham actor in Genoa to becoming an assistant to film director Carlo Lizzani, to making his first movie.

Giuliano tells about meeting Vera for the first time, and then he and Vera take turns telling about how their relationship developed.

Vera talks about her parents and how they met and fell in love. Her mother was a stage actress and her father a military commander.

Vera's daughter was a teenager when Giuliano began courting her mother. Giuliano tells some stories about World War II and how crazy things were.

Giuliano talks about his beginnings as a director. Vera threatened to leave him when he thought he might accept certain jobs.

Giuliano and Vera talk about some of the colorful episodes in their time together on set. Vera tells about how Giuliano accepted her daughter, Elisabetta, from a previous relationship.

Giuliano and Vera were of one mind regarding respect for workers and fighting against intolerance. One episode that particularly struck Giuliano was the news from the United States involving Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants, and anarchists, who were unjustly arrested and condemned to the electric chair in 1927. Montaldo would go on to make a film about that story.

Giuliano and Vera talk a little bit about the music for the Sacco and Vanzetti film, as well as a serendipitous moment in NY connected with that. When the film came out it had success, especially with young people. Their outrage about the unfair trial led to the governor of Massachusetts recognizing the unfairness of their trial.

What works in the relationship between Vera and Giuliano is partly the fact that they complement each other, like yin and yang. They talk about a biographical movie they made about Giordano Bruno, a 16th-century Italian philosopher and cosmological theorist, with Gian Maria Volonté.

Montaldo tells how the film about Marco Polo came about. It was shot on three different continents.