He stands at the corner of the Basilica di Santa Croce staring into the distance. He pays no attention to the tourists crowding at his feet and the locals chatting next to him.
He clutches his robe and balances a laurel on his head on a hot day in May 2018. An eagle is perched behind him.
He is the “father of the Italian language.” The Divine Poet. Dante Alighieri.
You cannot walk in Florence without seeing Dante’s face or name. Whether it be on postcards, hotel names, museums or his monument in Piazza Santa Croce.
Everyone knows his name, but few know his story.
Unlike other famous Florentines, Dante was not a Renaissance man. Before Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli, Florence had Dante.
Before Galileo invented his first telescope, there was Dante.
Before there was even the Duomo, there was Dante. Seriously, Google it.
Dante Alighieri is one of the most recognizable names in Italian literature and the pride of his hometown of Florence. He was a Medieval poet and political theorist who is best known for writing La Divina Commedia, a three-part narrative poem in which Dante himself ventures through hell (inferno), purgatory (purgatorio), and, finally, heaven (paradiso)
Dante was born in 1265 in the Republic of Florence. Although his exact birth date is unknown, we do know that he was born under the sign of Gemini, which he mentions in Paradiso.
At the time, Florence saw itself as the Rome of Tuscany. According to Britannica, Florence was bursting at the seams with post-war pride after the battle of Montaperti in 1266.
Little is known about Dante’s early life besides his education. Dante’s mother died when he was 7 years old, according to poets.org. His father later remarried and had two more children, Francesco and Gaetana.
As a child, Dante studied rhetoric, literature, civics and politics under Brunetto Latini, a Florentine magistrate and ambassador, according to the Museo Casa Di Dante website.
At the age of 9, Dante met Beatrice Portinari, the love of his life. Although the pair only met three times, Beatrice stole his heart and sparked his imagination.
But the stars were not aligned for Dante and Beatrice. By the age of 12, they were betrothed to different people. Dante married Gemma Donarti, and Beatrice married… some other guy. Heartache struck Dante again in 1290, when Beatrice died suddenly at the age of 24.
However, Dante kept her memory alive. Beatrice appears in Paradiso to guide Dante’s character through heaven. She was also his muse for La Vita Nuova, a collection of 25 sonnets, one balled, and four complete songs. The fifth song was purposefully left unfinished; it was interrupted by Beatrice’s death.
"I felt awoken in my heart a loving spirit that was sleeping; and then I saw Love coming from far away so glad, I could just recognize.”- Dante, La Vita Nuova
Enough about love, let’s talk about Florence’s messy politics.
I’ll keep it brief: there were the Guelphs, who supported the papacy, and there were the Ghibellines, who supported the Holy Roman Emperor. Any time a group won a battle, the other was exiled from the city.
Dante and his family were Guelphs, and Dante himself was a cavalryman in the battle of Campaldino in 1289. The Guelphs won the battle and kicked out the Ghibellines. Simple, right? Wrong.
Dante as a calvaryman and his dagger displayed in the Museo Casa di Dante.
Politics became even more complicated when the Guelphs split into two groups: the Black Guelphs, who were loyal to the papacy, and the White Guelphs, who were suspicious of the Pope’s power.
When word got out that Pope Boniface VII was planning a military occupation of Florence, Dante and a group of Florentines were sent to Rome to investigate. This was a mistake.
The Black Guelphs took over the city and seized Dante’s assets while he was gone. Dante was permanently exiled from Florence.
As Dante wandered throughout Italy, he began to write his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. Exile was enough inspiration to write Inferno. As his character moves through hell, purgatory and heaven, he undergoes a process of self-reflection and redemption. For Dante, being away from Florence was damnation.
Dante loved Florence, even when it didn’t love him back.
Dante’s The Divine Comedy did for Italian what Don Quixote did for Spanish. Instead of writing in Latin, Dante wrote in an Italian vernacular people could understand and relate to.
His writing helped solidify what the standard Italian language is. Although he primarily wrote in the Tuscan dialect, he also used certain phrases and dialects from other parts of Italy.
But Dante would never return to his beloved Florence, not even in death.
In the Basilica di Santa Croce, his stone tomb depicts two women standing on either side of his coffin while a statue of Dante sits in an inquisitive pose. To his left is Poetry mourning his death. To his right, Patria, who represents Italy, points to him with pride.
In the tomb is nothing. It’s empty.
Santa Croce is the final resting place of Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Galileo, but not Dante.
While still in exile, Dante was traveling through a town called Ravenna, which is 192 kilometers northeast of Florence, where he fell ill. He died at the age of 56, a year after finishing The Divine Comedy, and was buried in September 1831.
The drama didn’t stop there. In the 16th century, Florence began to regret exiling one of the most important Italians to ever live. I wonder why.
The city wanted Dante’s remains to bury him in his hometown, according to the basilica's blog. Pope Leo X, who was a member of the Medici family, agreed to a petition to erect a monument and return Dante’s remains to Florence. Ravenna was having none of it.
Dante’s bones were moved from his grave to an urn which was hidden in a hole in the wall. Ravenna gave Florence Dante’s empty marble sarcophagus.
The urn of bones remained in the hole in the wall until 1677, when brother Antonio Santi found them. Santi placed the bones in a wooden chest and labelled it as Dante’s remains.
Over 200 years later, the bones were found again. He was finally laid to rest (for real this time) at the Basilica di San Francesco. Phew.
Tourists notice the Museo Casa di Dante, a museum located in Dante's original home.
Today, Florence honors Dante’s memory as much as it possibly can. You can visit Museo Casa di Dante for 4 euros or visit his empty tomb in Santa Croce for 8 euros. You could also marvel at the monument dedicated to his memory in front of the basilica for free.
Sandra, an employee at the Santa Croce museum, said both the tomb and statue serve to remember Florence’s lost son.
“This is a pantheon of famous Italians,” she said. “He’s the only one missing, and the monument is to remind of him.”
His home’s museum refers to Dante as the “universal writer” because he didn’t just write The Divine Comedy for himself or for his generation. He wrote it for all of mankind.
What word can you use to describe a person who writes three books about himself traveling through hell, purgatory and heaven? How do you describe someone who includes his friends, family and enemies as characters while satirizing the political landscape of the time?
Bold? Audacious? Ballsy?
In a word, Dante was influential. He was a game-changer before the game even existed. Perhaps the best way to honor Dante’s memory is to enjoy Florence for the beautiful city it is, just like he did.
“Florence, within the ancient circle, she taketh still her tierce and nones, Abode in quiet, temperate and chaste.” - Dante, Paradiso XV 97-99