Dante's Florence: Poet, Exile, and the Divine Comedy

I'm Prof. Julian Sato, and we're exploring medieval Florence to trace the life of Dante Alighieri and the city that shaped him before exile transformed him into one of history's greatest poets. Over the next 108 minutes, we'll discover how churches and civic buildings stood adjacent throughout Florence, a spatial arrangement that Dante's Divine Comedy mirrors in its very structure. You'll walk through spaces where Franciscan devotion and Dominican theology shaped the intellectual currents of his world. You'll stand where the author first saw light in 1265 and spent his formative years before the Guelph-Ghibelline conflicts upended his entire life. But what you'll really uncover is how the city's architecture embodied the vertical journey Dante imagined in the Paradiso, and how the political machinery of Florence's magistrates would ultimately oppose him and force his exile. This is a guided walking experience of approximately 108 minutes in total, combining movement through the city with audio stops at each location. The terrain is moderate, the pace conversational.