Late nineteenth century, on the trail of a hymn to freedom, composed by Pietro Gori: lawyer, poet, “socially dangerous” anarchist, who finds himself living through one of the nation’s most troubled Late 19th century. A story that unravels between Pisa, Milan, Lugano, Livorno, Rosignano, the Island of Elba, but also America, on the trail of a famous song that gives the book its title, and its author, Pietro Gori: a lawyer, a poet, a “socially dangerous” anarchist, who finds himself living through one of the nation's most tormented seasons. A time when Cesare Lombroso's criminal anthropology - with the consent of psychiatrists, jurists and police officials - was tasked with building a systematic control network for all kinds of deviance, even political deviance. And especially that which proclaimed “the whole world” as home and freedom as the only law.

On a cold, snowy winter evening in Lugano, a handcuffed squad of men are escorted to the train station: they are to board a train heading north to Basel, to the German border. Arrested and thrown in jail as miscreants, the only charge hanging over them is that of being potentially subversive, therefore undesirable: a threat to the orderly and quiet life of the city. They are Italians, mostly young men, of whom only a first and last name will remain, with no soul or body. Except for one, born in Messina but of a Tuscan father and mother: just as he is locked up in the Ticino jails, in late January 1895, Pietro Gori composes what will become the song of freedom for generations to come: Il canto degli anarchici espulsi, better known as Addio Lugano bella.