Florence - In the Hall of Five Hundred at the Palazzo Vecchio – the city hall of Florence – tourists are staring upward, trying to spot the words cerca trova – “seek and you shall find” – on a Vasari mural that figures in the plot of Inferno, the latest bestseller by Dan Brown. In his book, Brown has symbologist Robert Langdon racing across Florence in pursuit of a bad guy who’s obsessed with Dante Alighieri, the author of the original Inferno.
The hall is magnificent, but I’m in Florence on a different mission: to seek out what’s left of Dante’s medieval world. Would the great poet recognise anything in this city so dominated by Renaissance art and architecture if he were to return? The last time he walked these streets, after all, was 700 years ago.
This morning, when I crossed the Piazza della Signoria to reach the Palazzo Vecchio, I was literally following in Dante’s footsteps. Dante would have come to this building often when it was known as the Palazzo dei Priori, housing the city’s priors, or municipal councilmen. Dante served as a prior in 1300. All that’s left of the poet here is his death mask.
I find the mask to the left of the hall’s back balcony. It’s a reconstruction based on written descriptions and measurements of the poet’s skull. An eerie-looking object, it sits in a box on a bureau in a bare corridor, looking like a discarded artefact. Among the more dazzling objects of the Renaissance here, he seems like an afterthought. Has Florence forgotten Dante?
Its merchants certainly haven’t. In the three days I’ve been here, I’ve already spotted a leather shop called Dante Alighieri that sells guitar-shaped purses, a restaurant that promises Il Paradiso della Pizza, a Hotel Dante and street vendors selling everything from Dante busts to illustrations of Dante’s “nine circles of hell”.
The city also has plenty of Dante memorials, paintings and sculptures. More than 30 plaques emblazoned with Dante’s verses are placed in locations mentioned in his work. At the hotel where I’m staying, housed in a 14th-century structure built only decades after the poet’s death, there are more Dante quotes on the walls and embedded in the tiles. The Locanda dei Poeti also offers a Dante Alighieri room, an appropriate name for singles accommodations: Dante had a reputation for being a loner.
At least that’s the legend. We know only a few facts about the 13th-century poet. We don’t know his exact birth date, but we do know that in the 33 or so years he lived in Florence, he fought in a battle, joined a political party, fell in love with a woman he met only twice but idealised for the rest of his life, married another woman he had been betrothed to since he was 12, and fathered three children with her. Oh, and he wrote poetry.
But only when he was exiled in 1302 and condemned to be burned at the stake if he ever returned to Florence did his poems become famous, particularly a three-part masterpiece he wrote in exile that came to be known as The Divine Comedy. It chronicles his three-day journey through hell (Inferno), purgatory (Purgatorio) and heaven (Paradiso) and is dedicated to Beatrice, the object of his amorous obsession.
And then there’s the story of how Dante used to sit on a rock watching the construction of Florence’s cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, more famously known as Il Duomo, which was begun in 1296. He would reportedly sit for hours, writing love poems to Beatrice, and the rock became known as Il Sasso di Dante, or Dante’s rock.
One day, a fellow Florentine passed by and asked the poet: “What do you like to eat for breakfast?” Not looking up, Dante replied: “Eggs.” A year later, the same Florentine supposedly found the poet perched on the same rock and decided to test the poet’s famous memory. “How?” he asked. “With salt,” Dante quickly answered.
I go in search of Dante’s rock, wending my way through the San Lorenzo market, lined with kiosks where hard-sell merchants hawk leather bags and jackets. The kiosks are in keeping with the spirit of Dante’s time: 13th-century Florence already saw itself as a commercial hub specialising in banking and the trade of luxury goods such as leather.
Heading south, I first reach the Piazza di San Giovanni, where I come upon a building that Dante would recognise instantly: the octagonal Baptistery of San Giovanni. Inside the basilica that he called his bel San Giovanni, I can see the outline of the octagonal baptismal font where he was christened. And as I gaze up at the figure of Satan chewing on a sinner on the mosaic ceiling, I know where Dante got his inspiration for the three-headed devil in his Inferno.
Across the way is Il Duomo (completed in 1436) and the Tower of Giotto (which wasn’t yet built when Dante lived in Florence). I stop to tour the crypt beneath Il Duomo to see the parts of the walls and traces of the mosaic floor of the church it replaced (and that Dante attended).
And that rock of Dante’s? I think I’ve found it in a small piazza on the north side of Il Duomo, between a bistro called Il Sasso di Dante and a fruit stand with a hand-painted sign that proclaims: Qui mangiava Dante la frutta (Dante ate fruit here). There’s a rock with a metal label written in Fiorentino, the dialect Dante used that became the basis of modern Italian. It reads: I’ vero sasso di Dante (the true rock of Dante). But, a barista says the rock’s a fake. He directs me to a building around the corner in the Piazza del Duomo, where a plaque on the wall marks the spot where the true rock once stood.
Alas, it isn’t the only faux site I’ll find in Florence. The nearby Casa di Dante also turns out to be a red herring. The restored medieval building most certainly never was Dante’s home. Most Dante scholars place the Alighieri house, long since torn down, in the Piazza San Martino, next to the Torre della Castagna, one of the city’s best-preserved medieval towers. Dante wrote that he was born in the shadow of Badia Fiorentina, a Benedictine monastery just down the street. The area, with its maze of alleys, still retains a medieval flavour.
The Casa di Dante, which houses the Dante Museum, is a great way to get the feel of how a nobleman lived in the 1200s. The museum doesn’t have any Dante artefacts, but there’s a fascinating painting showing the city as it would have looked in Dante’s day, with its forest of towers and the Ponte Vecchio spanning the Arno.
There’s also a replica of a nobleman’s bedroom.
Leaving the museum, I spot a sign to “Dante’s Church”. Its real name is Santa Margherita and legend says this is where he first saw Beatrice Portinari, his poetic inspiration. Tragically, she died at 24 and may be buried in the church. The uncertainty doesn’t stop tormented lovers from putting notes to her in a basket in front of her presumed grave site.
This is also the church where Dante married Gemma Donati.
I think Dante would prefer the more majestic Badia Fiorentina, which he mentions in The Divine Comedy, commenting on the Gregorian chant wafting from behind its cloistered walls. Another church Dante frequented that seems more in keeping with his soaring poetry is San Miniato al Monte, on a hillside. To reach the church, I take a bus from the train station in time to make 6pm vespers and enjoy the stunning view.
Looking down on the city’s historic centre, I think about how small this city-state was just as the Middle Ages were giving way to the early Renaissance. In Dante’s time, a fortified wall encircled what is now the historic centre. For his studies with the Dominicans and Franciscans, he had to risk going into unprotected territory to visit two churches that were outside the city walls: Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce.
I visit Santa Croce on my last day. A massive 19th-century statue of the poet stands guard at the church, where Roberto Benigni’s TuttoDante celebration is held. Last year, 70 000 people came to hear the Tuscan-born actor read from The Divine Comedy.
Inside, Dante’s “tomb” is still empty. For centuries, the city of Ravenna, where Dante died in 1321, has refused to give up his bones – even hiding them when Pope Leo X ordered their return to Florence in 1519. Florence only lifted that death sentence against Dante in 2008.
No wonder he looks so grumpy. Or, perhaps the churlish Dante is trying to tell us not to look for him in all the faux Dante places in Florence, but rather in the beauty of his beloved city. Dante’s Florence lives side by side with Renaissance Florence and all the periods that have followed.
This city doesn’t obliterate its past; it builds on it. Search for Dante, and you’ll find Florence. – The Independent