It is Christmas 1908 in Messina, one of the richest merchant cities of the Mediterranean. Peter, the 13 year-old son of a rich English family is notorious for his cruelty to children, animals and servants. One night he is ambushed and wakes up in a coffin underground in the city's Gothic cemetery, buried in retaliation for his callousness by a servant boy from his mother's estate. When a powerful earthquake razes Messina to the ground, Peter is trapped and his whereabouts are forgotten. Until a century later an English archaeologist and his daughter arrive in the city.

Jamal, a young Gambian migrant, arrives in Italy on a boat, emotionally scarred by the tough travel of desperation and death (across the Mediterranean sea). He will recover his life, abruptly abandoned, on the keys of a piano which will offer him a way to reconstruct his future.