The painful truth of adoption sometimes bursts into the lives of middle-aged people unannounced: when aging parents or, after their departure, close relatives reveal that their entire existence is based on a loving lie. They discover that they have roots far away from the family and social context that they have always recognized as their home, and that they have been guests in a care institution between birth and adoption. The former Brefotrophy in Bari, for decades after the Second World War, took in children between the ages of 0 and 3, abandoned by single mothers or removed from their families because of their poverty.