Gabriele D'Annunzio was born in Pescara on March 12, 1863 from a bourgeois family of landowners. He completed his high school studies at the prestigious Cigognini College in Prato and he already showed himself in 1879 with the verses of his first book of poems, Primo Vere, achieving considerable success. In 1882 he moved to Rome enrolling in the Faculty of Arts, but did not finish his studies. Here he began his acquaintances with the well salons of Roman society and the most prominent environments, giving "scandal" for his numerous gallant adventures (in particular the one with Eleonora Duse, the most famous actress of the time), luxuries, races equestri, duels with the saber, and extravagances like the prolonged stays in a former convent of the Abruzzi where he retired to write his novels. In this phase he also began to collaborate with several literary periodicals and weeklies, receiving even the attentions of Carducci, who appreciated and encouraged him, becoming in a short time the favorite writer of Roman high society.
His love for luxury life, however, forced him to contract huge debts, which is why in 1891 he left Rome moving to Naples and Florence in 1898, but in 1910 because of the debts, the Florentine villa was expropriated and emigrated to France where he is welcomed with an enthusiasm never granted before to an Italian author, so much his fame had extended also beyond the national borders.
At the outbreak of the First World War "Vate" returns to Italy, placing himself on interventionist positions and enlisting as a volunteer despite his 52 years, making himself the protagonist of clamorous aerial and naval actions (the Flight over Vienna and the Beucca of Buccari) that won him the rank of colonel, 5 silver and one gold medals thus putting into practice his theories of the poet-hero, namely the need to convert the word into action.
After the war with the arrival of the armistice, D'Annunzio does not hide his disappointment with the conditions of peace signed by Italy and interprets the idea of "mutilated victory", leading an expedition of 287 volunteers to Fiume, renamed poetically legionaries, occupying the city and claiming the right of Italy to Dalmatia. The Italian Government, fearful of international complications, besieges Fiume with its troops and D'Annunzio is forced to retire to a villa on Lake Garda, which he later renamed "Vittoriale degli Italiani", turning it into a real museum of his life artistic and military.
Here the last years of the poet's life have passed almost in solitude, between books and some passing love, until in 1938 he suddenly died out due to a cerebral hemorrhage.