His family would let a flag of the Lombard league with the coat of arms of the city of Capodistria wave from the window of their villa during Austrian times.

[3] During the first World War, his father ended up with Vito Timmel in a semi-internment camp for military personnel of "unascertained loyalty" in Radkersburg.

[3] His mother, Fides Histriae Gambini, was from Capodistria (today Koper, Slovenia), where Pier Antonio spent much of his childhood and teenage years, in the villa of his maternal grandfather in Semedella.

Quarantotti Gambini met Richard Hughes in 1927, as the English writer was travelling in Istria, and received literary advice from him.

His major works date from this period of exile, and are heavily autobiographical (Amor militare, 1955, Il Cavallo Tripoli).