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Alla fine, sono tornato a casa.

Alla fine, sono tornato a casa.
In the end, I went back home.
From Lesson 156:Result conjunctions (quindi, perciò, dunque)·Italian

Breakdown of Alla fine, sono tornato a casa.

la casa
the house
tornare
to return
a
to / at
la fine
the end

Questions & Answers about Alla fine, sono tornato a casa.

Does alla fine work like the result conjunctions we are learning in this lesson?
Yes! While quindi means therefore or so, alla fine means in the end or eventually. It acts as a consequence or conclusion to a story, wrapping up what happened just like the result conjunctions you are currently practicing.
Why does it use sono instead of ho for the past tense?
The verb tornare (to return or go back) is a verb of movement. In the past tense, verbs that show movement or a change of state usually take essere (to be) as their helper verb instead of avere (to have). That is why we say sono tornato.
If a woman were speaking, would the sentence change?
Yes. Because this past tense uses essere as the helper verb, the ending of the action word tornato has to match the gender and number of the subject. A female speaker would change the ending to an -a and say sono tornata.
Why is it a casa and not alla casa?
When you talk about going home or being at home, you just use the preposition a without the definite article (the). It is a set phrase, very much like how we say going home instead of going to the home in English.

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