Let’s discover all places in Venice related to the great poet Dante Alighieri with “Detourism: La newsletter di Venezia”! Enjoy your reading!
700th anniversary of Dante’s death: three spots in Venice related to the great poet
March 25th 2021 was Dante Alighieri Day, and Italy began a year-long calendar of events to mark the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death. According to scholars, on March 25th Dante undertook the ultramundane journey described in The Divine Comedy. Italy is celebrating throughout 2021 with a vast program including the events promoted by Florence, Ravenna and Verona, cities where the poet spent the most time.
After being exiled from his hometown of Florence, Dante spent his days wandering through Northern Italy. In the summer of 1321 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Serenissima by Guido Novello Da Polenta, lord of Ravenna. The Doge Giovanni Soranzo invited Dante to his own palace in Campo San Polo. On his return, the poet contracted malaria and died in Ravenna on the night between 13 and 14 of September 1321.
In Inferno XXI, there is a reference to the “Arzanà“, Venice’s Arsenal, the hub of Venetian ship building, listed as the world’s first assembly line. Dante provides a vivid description of the industriousness of the master artisans (the arsenalotti) working here. At the monumental entrance to the Arsenale, on the right, you can see a niche in which a bust of Dante is placed to commemorate the genius of the poet.
In Venice there is also a contemporary art installation dedicated to the Supreme Poet, Dante’s barge. It is a bronze sculpture, by the Russian artist Georgy Frangulyan, located on a floating platform in the canal in front of San Michele, the Venetian island graveyard. Placed here in 2007 on the occasion of the 52 edition of the Biennale Arte, the sculpture evokes the journey of Dante, guided by Virgil, through the realms of the dead; the hand of the Roman poet points to San Michele.
If you’d like to read Dante’s lines, we suggest the edition of The Divine Comedy edited by Pietro Bembo and printed in Venice by Aldo Manuzio in 1502: Le Terze rime. Lo ‘nferno e ‘l Purgatorio e ‘l Paradiso di Dante Alaghieri.
Visit Veneto by walking in the footsteps of Dante
[source: La newsletter di Venezia, N° 06/2021 del 18.03.2021]
[picture: Didier Descouens / Wikimedia Commons]
We are proud to publish some selected contents of such newsletter (see previous post: “Detourism for the Up and Down the Bridges“). On our website, in several episodes, we will only present some samples (see all posts in our archive page “Detourism Newsletter“), but the invitation addressed to all the friends of the Up and Down the Bridges is to subscribe to the newsletter directly.
Special thanks to the Councillor for Tourism for having enthusiastically welcomed this new important collaboration between TGS Eurogroup and the Tourism Office of the Town of Venice and for giving us the precious opportunity to publish on the pages of this blog some extracts from this newsletter, both in Italian and in English.
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