Carlo, 21 years old and exempted from military service, is spending the summer in his father's empty villa and relaxing with friends in Riccione, a seaside town untouched by the war.

Carlo and Roberta are attracted to each other and he asks her out, taking her for a trip to the neutral state of San Marino, although he has a girlfriend, Rossana.

When news comes of the fall of the Fascist regime, jubilant citizens sack the party headquarters, toppling the bust of Mussolini.

When she returns home, both Maddalena and her mother express their disapproval of the affair, to which she replies, that nobody had cared when she was married to an older man, and that for the first time in her life she is happy.

Their journey is interrupted by an air raid, and due to the damage, all trains are cancelled except those heading back south.