Dante’s itinerary of Forlì

Dante Alighieri is considered the father of the Italian language and the Divine Comedy is believed to be the greatest literary work written by an Italian as well as one of the most highly regarded masterpieces of the world’s literature. With two consecutive sentences, 27 January and 10 March 1302, the Florentine poet was condemned to the stake and all his property destroyed. From that moment on he was unable to see his hometown. While on the run Dante found refuge initially at San Benedetto in Alpe, then at Forlì. The illustrious poet adds in his work many quotes of Forlì and its territory.

• Porta Schiavonia – starting along the most travelled street by those who came from Tuscany
• Via Curte – has the same form since the time of Dante, being the ancient privately owned street close to the Lombardic Gardens.
• Convent of Ripa – was built in the fifteenth century on the area once called “Contrata fiorentina” on which the “Torre fiorentina”(Florentine Tower) rose that was a known landmark for the community of exiled Tuscan Ghibellines .
• Church of the Most Holy Trinity – the oldest Christian Romanesque parish church of Forlì, it preserves a fourteenth-century fresco .
• Ponte dei Morattini – one of the many bridges built in the dark ages on the citizen branch of the river Montone.
• Palazzo Albicini – the building absorbed towards the end of the fifteenth century the houses that made up the Insula, the district of the Ordelaffi; Dante was a guest of Scarpetta, the first lord of Forlì and afterwards he was a guest for a second time to the court of Cecco I (the “green flock” from the Divine Comedy).
• Church and Convent of Saint Francesco Grande – destroyed at the end of the eighteenth century, the complex hosted the Franciscan Friars Minor, dear to Dante.
• Via delle Torri and Ponte dei Cavalieri – street studded, at the time, with family towers; the late-Roman bridge went over the canalized branch of the river and brings to the piazza.
• Abbey of S. Mercuriale – the complex dates back to at least the 1178; Dante undoubtedly admired the bell-tower (at its base, towards the cloister was painted a fourteenth-century fresco) and the high-relief of the lunette.
• Rialto Piazza – here stood the Ponte del Pane (Roman) surrounded by shops; at Dante’s time the canal of Ravaldino ran over that entire side of the Piazza and alongside the most important market of the region; in the piazza took place the “sanguinary heap” (Inferno,XXVII).
• Basilica of S. Maria dei Servi – at that time Pellegrino Laziosi was there, born in 1265 like Dante, then sanctified. The gate is contemporaneous to the poet and conserves fourteenth-century fresco.