The Lombards begin as a Germanic people in northern Europe before pushing south through the continent and into Italy, where they carve out a kingdom that holds for more than two centuries. This film uses reenactments alongside historical commentary to trace that migration and conquest, showing how a group Byzantine and Roman writers dismissed as barbarian invaders built a functioning state with its own law codes and royal court. It follows the tension between the Lombards' warrior culture, built on loyalty to the king, and the more settled society that grows once they control Italian territory, including their engagement with poetry, art, and the Byzantine world on their borders. The film treats the kingdom's eventual decline as part of the same story as its rise, the same restless expansion that built it also straining it. Reenacted battle and court scenes stand in for footage that cannot exist for this period, filling out names and events the surviving written record only sketches in outline.