Florence: Dante and the City He Sent to Hell

You are facing the Baptistery of San Giovanni, the octagonal white and green marble building opposite the cathedral. It is one of the oldest buildings in Florence. For centuries, every Florentine was baptized here. In 1265 a newborn named Durante Alighieri was brought here. We know him as Dante. In his poem, Dante calls it my beautiful San Giovanni. He wrote that in exile, knowing he would never see it again. If you go in, look up at the ceiling. It is covered in golden thirteenth-century mosaics. Above the altar is a Last Judgment. To one side, a huge horned Satan devouring the damned. Da…

You have entered the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Walk down the left aisle and look for a large painting on the wall: a man in red, crowned with laurel, holding an open book. It is Dante. Domenico di Michelino painted it in 1465, almost a hundred and fifty years after his death. Look at what surrounds him. To his right, Florence, with this very cathedral and its dome. To his left, the gate of Hell, with the damned filing in. Behind, the mountain of Purgatory. Above, the heavens of Paradise. The book he holds lights up the city. The message is clear: Florence acknowledges that its glo…

Look on the wall for the marble plaque reading Sasso di Dante. Dante's Stone. Tradition says there was a stone here where the young Dante sat on summer evenings to watch the masons raising the new cathedral. And to chat with the neighbors. It is probably a legend. But picture it: a young man from a middling family, neither rich nor poor, who wrote love poems and argued about philosophy. The Alighieri family had a minor title of nobility that had seen better days. Dante's father lent money and managed properties. Nothing glorious. Dante studied with private teachers, read the Latin classics…

You are facing the Casa di Dante, a stone building with a tower and battlements and a bust of the poet on its front. It looks medieval. It is not quite. It was built in the early twentieth century, imitating the style of the period, in the area where the Alighieri houses stood. The original house does not survive. It is a fitting metaphor for Dante in Florence: the city rebuilt him later, once he was famous. In life, it threw him out. Inside is a museum with maps of medieval Florence, reproductions of manuscripts and a model of the battle of Campaldino, in 1289, where Dante fought on horseb…

You have entered Santa Margherita de' Cerchi, a tiny, dark, almost hidden church. Florentines call it Dante's church. Look to one side at a basket full of slips of paper. They are letters. Visitors from all over the world write them, usually people in love without being loved back. They are addressed to Beatrice. Tradition says Beatrice Portinari is buried here, daughter of a banker in the neighborhood. Dante first saw her when they were both nine. He says that from that moment love ruled his soul. He came across her again at eighteen, in the street. She greeted him. That was all. They were…

You are facing the Torre della Castagna, a tall, narrow medieval stone tower. It is one of the few left of the hundreds that once filled the city. The priors, the magistrates who governed Florence, met here before the Palazzo Vecchio was built. They were shut in the tower during their term, so they could not be pressured. The word castagna means chestnut. Chestnuts were used for voting, dropped into bags. To enter politics, Dante had to join a guild. He chose the physicians and apothecaries, which included booksellers. In June 1300 he was elected prior. He served two months, like everyone. …

You are facing the Badia Fiorentina, an old Benedictine abbey. Look at the slender, pointed hexagonal bell tower, one of the most elegant in Florence. Its bells marked the hours for the city. Dante mentions them in Paradise. He speaks of old Florence, within its first walls, living in peace, sober and honest, to the rhythm of these bells. It is an idealized memory. Dante, in exile, imagined a pure Florence of the past, before money, greed and newcomers from the countryside arrived. Dante's teacher, Brunetto Latini, also lived in this neighborhood. An intellectual, politician and author of a…

You are facing the Bargello Palace. Look at that stone fortress with its battlemented tower. Today it is a sculpture museum. In Dante's day it was the Palace of the Podestà, the seat of Florentine justice. In 1301, Dante was sent to Rome as an envoy to Pope Boniface VIII. The pope backed the Blacks. He kept Dante in Rome. Meanwhile, a French prince, Charles of Valois, entered Florence as a supposed peacemaker. The Blacks seized the moment. They took power, looted the Whites' houses and the trials began. In January 1302, from this palace, the podestà condemned Dante for corruption in office.…

You are in Piazza della Signoria, facing the Palazzo Vecchio and its towering campanile. It has been the political heart of Florence for more than seven hundred years. When Dante was a boy, this square did not exist. Here stood the houses and towers of the Uberti, the great Ghibelline family, enemies of the Guelphs. When the Guelphs won, they razed the Uberti houses and forbade building on the land. That is why the square has this irregular shape, and the palace stands off to one side. No one wanted to build on cursed ground. The head of the Uberti was Farinata, a proud warrior. Dante puts …

You are at the entrance to the Ponte Vecchio, with its goldsmiths' shops hanging over the river. Look at the Arno, green and slow. Here, at the foot of the bridge, on Easter morning 1216, something happened that, according to the chroniclers, divided Florence for a century. A young nobleman, Buondelmonte de' Buondelmonti, was engaged to a girl from the Amidei family. He broke it off to marry another, from the Donati. It was a public humiliation. The Amidei and their allies met. Someone said a phrase Dante quotes in his poem: a thing done is ended. In other words: let's kill him and be done …

You are in Piazza Santa Croce. To the left of the marble facade, a giant statue of Dante, frowning, looks down. It was unveiled in 1865, for the six hundredth anniversary of his birth. Go into the basilica. Many of Italy's greats are buried here: Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Rossini. On the right you will see a huge monument to Dante. A seated, pensive figure, flanked by two weeping women. It is empty. Dante is not here. Dante died in 1321 in Ravenna, where he lived in exile under the protection of the city's lord. He was buried there. Florence tried for centuries to get his remain…

You have reached Piazzale Michelangelo. Look down: all of Florence. The Duomo's dome, the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Badia's bell tower, Santa Croce, the river and its bridges. Today's whole route, at a glance. This is the view Dante never had. In his lifetime, the dome did not exist. And after he left, in 1302, he never saw his city again. In exile he wrote the Divine Comedy. A hundred cantos, more than fourteen thousand lines. And he wrote it in the language Florentines spoke, not in Latin. That choice helped create modern Italian. Florence took centuries to recognize what it had l…