“The palace is empty. There is no music in Fiume.” With these words, in a letter to Luisa Bàccara in January 1921, Gabriele d’Annunzio bid farewell to his “city of life” and embarked on the final chapter of his life. After Fiume, the poet retired to the Vittoriale degli Italiani, where he spent the last seventeen years of his life turning his residence into a theatre of memory. The poet’s life and legacy are explored through a journey into the heart of the Vittoriale, a house-world in which rooms, objects, and inscriptions compose an autobiography in stone, constructed in space. Original footage, archival materials, letters, and manuscripts engage with d’Annunzio’s own words and with contributions from scholars and artists, creating a portrait of a writer who made his own life the material of creation and representation.

Director's Statement

The film shows us Gabriele d’Annunzio through his Vittoriale degli Italiani, conceived as an autobiography in “living stones”: a space in which objects, architectural elements, decor, inscriptions, and landscaping hold up a mirror to his creative, poetic, and visionary universe – and his obsessions, passions, and growing awareness of time and age. Scholars and historians play dynamic roles in the film, often off-screen and shown while at work on books, letters, and documents. And the words of d’Annunzio, drawn from notebooks, jottings, and other papers, are entrusted to the voice of Adriano Giannini: They burst in on the story as intimate, evocative fragments.