Name: Dante's Inferno
Author: Alighieri Dante

The 1506 Giunti edition of the Commedia is distinguished by its inclusion of a supplementary dialogue, circa el sito et misure dello inferno – ’concerning the site and measurements of Hell.’ 

Attributed to the Florentine mathematician and astronomer Antonio Manetti (1423–91), the text is cast as a conversation with the poet Girolamo Benivieni, in which Manetti carefully works through Dante’s topographical hints and numerical clues to reconstruct the precise form and dimensions of the Inferno. This was one of the first systematic attempts to treat Dante’s imagined landscape as a mappable, measurable space, rather than purely as a poetic conceit. To accompany this analysis, the edition includes seven woodcut maps that visualise Manetti’s conclusions. These schematics give readers a clear image of Hell as a conical pit, its narrowing circles spiralling down to Lucifer’s frozen lair. 

As Dante scholar Zoë Langer has observed: "Maps helped readers more easily grasp the complex moral, philosophical and geographical structure of Dante’s poem, while reflecting the richly cartographic nature of his writing. The poet’s own detailed descriptions of cities, countries, mountains, monuments and bodies of water oriented readers to Hell’s topography." (Mapping Hell, Brown University Library).

Although Gustave Doré’s nineteenth-century engravings would later dominate the popular imagination, Manetti’s dialogue and maps represent the first serious attempt to reconcile Dante’s poetic architecture with Renaissance mathematical reasoning – a striking fusion of art, science, and literature. As Langer notes, "cartography offered another way to situate literary landscapes in the natural world."

Ex Carta

 includes seven woodcut maps based on Antonio Manetti’s geometric reconstruction of Hell, transforming Dante’s poetic allegory into measurable Renaissance space. These diagrams visualise the infernal descent as a conical pit beneath Jerusalem, blending theology, mathematics, and early cartography.

 – is the great narrative poem of the Italian Middle Ages, begun around 1307 and completed shortly before the poet’s death in 1321.

Written in vernacular Tuscan rather than Latin, it follows Dante’s allegorical journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the embodiment of divine love. The 

 imagines Hell as a vast funnel-shaped pit beneath Jerusalem, descending through nine concentric circles in which sinners are punished according to the nature and gravity of their sins – from the relatively mild limbo of the virtuous pagans at the top to the frozen pit of treachery at the very bottom.

The poem combines vivid storytelling with intricate theological and philosophical reflection, offering not only a vision of the afterlife but also a summation of medieval learning and belief. Revered as Italy’s national epic, the 

 secured Dante’s place as one of the central figures of European literature.

Copies of the 1506 Giunti edition are scarce today, and prized by libraries and collectors alike. Its survival is significant not only as a witness to the early reception of Dante in print, but also as one of the earliest attempts to supplement the Commedia with scholarly apparatus, interpretive commentary, and visual aids. For this reason, it occupies a special place in the long history of Dante’s transmission, interpretation, and illustration.

Dante continues to exert a powerful influence on imaginative writing, and science fiction critic John Clute notes echoes of his Inferno in works ranging from Larry Niven’s science fiction to James Merrill’s poetry, and most recently in Adam Roberts’s Purgatory Mount (2012), which reworks Dante’s vision in a futuristic setting. As Clute observes:

"It has profoundly affected not only the religious imagination but – especially as regards the astonishing architectonic boldness of the Inferno – has proved fundamental to the allegorical creation of imaginary worlds in literature generally." (Clute and Nichols, 2025)

As well as literary, Dante’s Inferno remains a cultural touchstone. In cinema, from the early Italian silent adaption 

 (2018) that pay homage to the work in different ways. A video game adaptation, 

, was released by Electronic Arts in 2010 and then adapted into an anime-style movie. The poem’s influence can be traced in everything from graphic novels to heavy metal concept albums.

When Kingsley Amis published a collection of essays on science fiction in 1960, it was titled 

, acknowledging Dante’s foundational influence on dystopian imaginative fiction and connecting the cartographical with the visionary.

Dante's vision of Hell and the Tomb of Lucifer

Title page for Dante Alighieri's Commedia

Dante lost in the dark forest, his path blocked by a leopard, a lion, and a wolf.

Everything Reduced to One Plan' - A Vision of Hell

The Chamber of Hell

Overview of Hell

The first Five Circles of Hell

Circles Six and Seven of Hell

The Lair of Geryon

 is distinguished by its inclusion of a supplementary dialogue, 'circa el sito et misure dello inferno' – ’concerning the site and measurements of Hell.’