Dante Alighieri

Florentine poet, writer, and philosopher (c. 1265–1321)

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Lived 1265–1321, aged 56

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Wikipedia
198 languages
Cross-language footprint
Global rank
#86
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Era
1265–1321
Aged 56
Known for
Dante's Inferno
1924

Summary

Updated 2026-08-30

He wrote a poem about walking through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven — and it became the blueprint for how the West imagines the afterlife. Seven centuries later, the Divine Comedy still shapes art, literature, and the popular picture of damnation.

Biography

About

Born around May 1265, Dante Alighieri came of age in Florence when Latin still ruled the page and Italian poets borrowed from France. He broke both habits: he wrote in Tuscan, the vernacular of his city, and defended it in De vulgari eloquentia as fit for serious work. The New Life appeared in 1295; the Divine Comedy followed, a journey through the three realms that Boccaccio would later call "divine." The poem's terza rima—interlocking three-line rhyme—was his invention. His choice of dialect became the foundation of modern Italian, and his influence bled across borders: Chaucer, Milton, Tenn…

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