The film shows how Italy's historic national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi (embodied by Renzo Ricci) leads a military campaign known as Expedition of the Thousand in 1860 and conquers Sicily and Naples. When the Bourbon monarchy has left Southern Italy, he supports Victor Emmanuel II of Italy who achieves a lasting unification under the aegis the House of Savoy. Roberto Rossellini stated he was very more proud of this film than of any other film he ever made.

Boccaccio dreams of making a trip to hell and listening to the licentious tales of the damned: Story 1: Two couples, unknown to each one of them agree for swinging, but each meets one's own spouse. Story 2: A friar takes advantage, with deception, of a young bride obsessed with her insatiable husband. Story 3: A merchant is absent from home by entrusting his wife to her nephew and she initiates him to sexual experiences. Story 4: A husband has a homosexual relationship with one of his workers; the wife threatens the worker and requires too much sex from him and causes to his death. Story 5: A husband entrusts his wife and daughter to a music teacher who is considered inverted and therefore inoffensive: he has relationships with two women separately and together.

A woman is tormented by dreams that she is the reincarnation of a dead countess. Her father, trying to get her to stop the dreams, takes her to a village near the castle of the late countess. In the village she meets a reporter who is investigating reports of the deaths of two young women who it is believed were killed by a creature that lives in the castle.