If Dante were here now: a self-guided tour of Florence
From the Baptistery to San Miniato al Monte
Toscana Promozione Turistica, Helen Farrell March 4, 2021 - 17:20
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Retracing Dante’s steps means setting off on a unique journey into the art, history, culture and spirituality of Florence in the mid-1300s. In this
self-guided tour of Dante’s Florence, we peel back the layers of history, often in plain view of the piazzas and occasionally hidden away in the medieval backstreets.
Florence, within the ancient ring, from which she takes the bell-sound still of terce and nones, lived on in modesty, chasteness and peace. -Paradiso 15: 97-99
an ingenious timelapse of never-ending passersby, like the trudging circles in the
Inferno, in front of the nineteenth-century Carrara marble tribute by Paolo Emilio Demi. The half-hour of camera clicking has attracted the attention of the young army officers standing guard over the U-shaped corridor and its priceless possessions. “I wonder why Alighieri is spelled with two ‘l’s,” the soldier muses. “Maybe it’s a mistranslation from the Latin.” Any ideas?
This issue of
The Florentine celebrates Florence’s Supreme Poet ahead of Dantedì on March 25, the date when Dante is believed to have started writing his ‘Divine Comedy’ and the date that the Italian government has dedicated to the writer as a symbol of Italian culture worldwide. For Eugenio Giani, president of the Tuscany Region, Dante is the “cultural father of all of Tuscany” as well as a “friend… a familiar presence even to those who haven’t studied literature”, while for Mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, “Dante will be our most powerful driving force for rebirth”. (You can read these institutional greetings on page 12 in the magazine.)