After Rocco marries, he gets his sister-in-law pregnant. Then his maid. They and their children and grandchildren all live in a house together. Further complications ensue.

It all begins in 1920 in the countryside surrounding Bari, Apulia. A rich farmer and his three concubines (two of them the sisters of his handyman and the third his maid) form a complicated family, in which paternity and maternity is occasionally uncertain. Twenty years later, the eldest of the group weds and flees to Bari. The rest of the relatives move - not only to the same city, but into the same building. Furthermore, the "tribe" expands with the addition of the in-laws of the first-born.