Naples, 1959. Pure Mathematics professor Renato Caccioppoli, Bakunin's grandson, is a tortured soul. Recently discharged from the psychiatric hospital, left by his wife, and increasingly disillusioned with academia and the Communist Party, he lives his last days with painful detachment.

A group of actors meet with little money in a unofficial theatre in Naples' Spanish Boroughs. Director's plan is to travel to Sarajevo, still under siege, to stage a classic Eschilus' play about civil war in Tebe. While they rehearse in the theatre cast members come and go and another kind of war goes on every day in nearby streets of old Naples.

The impossible love between one prostitute, managing a bunch of handicapped prostitutes, and the homosexual Adamo. In the horrible suburb of Napoli we can follow among fantasy, mythology and reality the absurd life of the protagonists.

Five Neapolitan directors depict life in the city under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius for this anthology film of comedy, drama, surrealism, and political commentary.