An old woman finds a baby among the cabbages in her garden; she takes care of him and calls him Totò. When she dies, he is sent to an orphanage, which he leaves as a teenager. When Totò goes out in the world, he expects everyone to be open-hearted as himself, but they aren't. Without belongings or a place to live, he soon turns up among other homeless people, living scattered in boxes and cement pipes on a vast, barren field outside Milan. With his energy and enthusiasm, Totò quickly engages the outcasts in transforming the place into a small shanty town. The eccentric misfits are turned into a warm-hearted community. But when the wealthy Mr. Mobbi buys the land, he tries to get rid of them.