Dante's Florence: A Self-Guided Tour of Love, Blood and Exile

Florence formed Dante Alighieri, drew him into its conflicts, expelled him, and eventually turned him into one of its greatest symbols. On this walking tour, you'll trace the three forces that defined his life – love, blood, and exile – through the medieval streets where he lived, governed, and was condemned.

The tour starts at the Baptistery of San Giovanni, the building Dante called my beautiful San Giovanni and dreamed of returning to until his dying day. From there, you'll wind through narrow streets past the Torre della Pagliazza, one of Florence's oldest medieval towers, whose rounded walls rest on the curved foundations of a Roman bathhouse. You'll pass the small Church of Santa Margherita dei Cerchi, traditionally linked to Beatrice Portinari, and examine what Florence actually knows about the woman Dante transformed into a literary ideal – and what it invented.

Along the way, you'll discover how guild membership gave Dante the legal status to enter politics, how a broken marriage promise sparked generations of factional violence, and how a murder at Ponte Vecchio became the symbolic beginning of Florence's civil wars. At the Bargello – the city's medieval palace of justice – you'll hear the exact charges that condemned Dante to exile and the death sentence issued when he refused to return. The tour ends at the monumental statue of Dante outside the Basilica of Santa Croce, where his empty cenotaph inside and this enormous likeness outside raise a question the city never quite answered.

On this 90-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Examine the Torre della Castagna, where Florence's Priors cast votes using chestnuts before Palazzo Vecchio existed
• Hear how Dante exiled his closest poetic friend, Guido Cavalcanti, in the name of public order
• Visit Orsanmichele, where guild statues reveal the commercial power that controlled access to government
• Explore the site of the Torre degli Amidei, where Dante located the origins of Florence's grief
• Discover how Giovanni Boccaccio helped rescue Dante's reputation and delivered ten gold florins to his exiled daughter
• See the fresco inside the Bargello chapel where Dante appears among the blessed – painted in the same building that sentenced him to death

This tour answers a question Florence never fully resolved: can a city truly reclaim the man it refused to welcome home?