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The most Dantesque Italy

2021-02-21T03:46:38.597Z


From the town of Gradara to Ravenna, guide through scenes from the life of Dante and the Divine Comedy on the 700th anniversary of his death


This year marks seven centuries of his death, but Dante Alighieri (Florence, 1265-Ravenna, 1321) is still useful to understand the difficult theorem that surrounds the individual and his doomed existence.

With his immortal

Divine Comedy he

shaped forever the sublime traces that are required of a great poet and sewed the womb of a soul walker, an archaeologist, sociologist and anthropologist of the senses and emotions.

Welcome to a deep walk through the ins and outs of hell, purgatory and paradise.

Because to get out of the hole, you first have to enter the hole.

MORE INFORMATION

  • Ravenna, the city of mosaics

  • Pisa in four squares

About 100 kilometers north of Rome, in the province of Viterbo, are the Acqua Bullicante hot springs.

An open-air place with sulphurous waters at more than 60 degrees.

Legend has it that one of the celestial horses that pulled the chariot of the god Helios, the Sun, accidentally fell into a spring in the area, whose waters have since acquired healing properties.

They are guarded by a stone plate with the verses extracted from the XIV canto del

Infierno,

where the stream is compared - architrave with limestone emanating water and vapors gushing out - with the infernal Phlegeton, one of the five rivers that flowed through Hades, along with Styx, Lethe, Cocytus and Acheron.

It is an important passage from one of the great works of Italian literature, written during two decades of exile during the war between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

Two decades of wandering and wandering, both physically and mentally.

Always with his beloved Beatriz in the deepest and most obsessive meanders of his mind.

Because yes, there is always an element that triggers any storm, any storm.

A butterfly that awakens a hurricane.

In Gustave Doré's illustrations, the

Divine Comedy

begins with Dante entering hell, led by the Roman poet Virgilio, through a door on which the phrase is written: "Let those who enter here all hope."

enlarge photo Entrance to the medieval village of Gradara (Italy).

getty images

The work has inspired various itineraries that invite you to get lost behind Dante's verses: "Halfway through life, / in a dark forest I was / because my route had lost."

One of them starts from the castle of Fumone, in the Lazio region, and continues through that of Gradara, in the Marches (mentioned in Canto V).

In the latter Dante places the tragic love affair of Francesca da Polenta and Paolo, the first-born of the Malatesta.

Located in a strategic point - close to the city of Urbino - due to the relations between nobles, Gradara is today a museum hotel with 14 rooms in the middle of a medieval town that radiates charm and history.

In fact, every summer

The Magic Castle

is held

,

where the performing arts give away a week of fairies and orcs, of fire and pink clouds.

The Tower of the Adimari in Florence - place of disputes with the much hated Filippo Argenti - or the Duomo of Pistoia (Canto XXIV), where an innocent Rampino di Ranuccio Foresi was sentenced to death, complete next to the Torre della Muda (or Torre de Gualandi), in Pisa, some of the most important stages of this

infernal

journey

.

It was precisely in that tower that Count Ugolino was imprisoned until his death for having betrayed the Ghibelline party in favor of his Guelph archenemies.

It was a medieval Tuscany tinged with spirituality, religion, esotericism, art, blood, and conspiracies.

Of towers and castles that today ask for the time to continue living.

400 kilometers following the poet

The

Dantesque

offer

for the traveler does

not end there

.

Between Florence and Ravenna, the beginning and end of the route, there are countless mysterious and magical towns that once found their place in the songs of the

Divine Comedy.

Between these two cities arises the Camino de Dante, an itinerary created in 2012 in the shape of a ring that connects the cardinal points of their existence, located in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, respectively.

They are almost 400 kilometers divided into 21 stages, and can be done on foot or by bicycle.

A long pilgrimage to give meaning to the meager existence between heights of 1,500 meters in the Apennine Mountains, secondary roads, unpaved roads and villages such as Oriolo dei Fichi, Brisighella, San Benedetto in Alpe, Premilcuore, San Godenzo, Dicomano, Pontassieve or Poppi.

In addition to Florence and its treasures: the church of Santa Margherita dei Cerchi (where the tomb of Beatrice is), the Piazza di Santa Croce with the sculpture of the genius, the House of Dante and the abbey of San Miniato al Monte, whose exit is Compare in the

Divine Comedy

with the door of purgatory.

enlarge photo Dante sculpture in the Piazza di Santa Croce in Florence.

alamy

And from there to Ravenna to square the loop.

There are the remains of the poet, who guards the unprecedented beauty of the Byzantine mosaics in the basilica of San Apollinaris the New, San Apollinare in Classe, San Vital and those of the mausoleum of Gala Placidia, sister of Emperor Honorius.

Ravenna, a Unesco world heritage site, is also the hometown of Francesca, whose love story with Paolo was born in Canto V del

Infierno

.

Historian Alessandro Barbero says that the

Divine Comedy

translated into real places would be an enormous mental construction.

What if everything was the other way around?

What if the fictitious were the architectural decoration, reduced to a mere optical illusion?

Perhaps we will have to wait another 700 years to see if, indeed, the only thing that is certain now is nothing more than reading this article.

Or if, as Beatriz would say, there are people who focus more on the desire to appear wise in the eyes of others instead of discovering the origins of everything that surrounds the individual.

A hill can also be a gentle descent.

Find inspiration for your next trips on our Facebook and Twitter and Instagram or subscribe here to the El Viajero Newsletter.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-02-21

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