The free-spirited writer Giacomo Casanova leaves life at a Swiss castle, and with it the gallant, libertine atmosphere of the 18th century. Together with his new, faithful servant Pompeu, Casanova sets off on a journey to the Carpathians.

He spends his last days in the poor and shadowy lands of northern Europe. There his rational thinking and his frivolous, earthly existence, succumb to a new, brutal, occult and romantic force, represented by Dracula and his eternal power.

Serra's dazzling, diffuse meditation is a Renaissance road trip into an opaque chasm of depravity in the upheaval of the ages.