Dantedì: Italy celebrates Dante on 700th anniversary

Rome: Italy marks the second edition of Dantedì, the national day dedicated to Dante Alighieri, on 25 March.

The annual event in honour of the Father of the Italian language will be particularly significant this year as Italy marks the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death.

There will be a bumper programme of commemorative events throughout 2021, across Italy, in tribute to the mediaeval poet and philosopher.

25 March was chosen as it is the date given by scholars for the start of the journey to the afterlife in Dante’s epic, The Divine Comedy.

The long narrative poem represents a 14th-century vision of the afterlife, describing Dante’s journey through the three realms of the dead: Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (heaven).

Dante, who began composing the groundbreaking trilogy in or around 1308, wrote the poem’s 14,233 lines in the vernacular, opting for the Tuscan dialect which was accessible to the masses rather than the traditional Latin reserved for the most educated readers.