← Literature 11

Literature 11 · Dante, Inferno

The Map of Hell

Nine circles, thirty-four cantos.

The funnel of Hell

Click a circle to open it. Use the arrow keys to walk down.

read in class where we are now still ahead

Choose a circle

How they drew it before us

Three of the oldest maps of the same place. All three are in the public domain. Click one to open it full size.

About the pictures

The engravings are Gustave Doré's, made for the 1861 French edition of the Inferno. The whole-Hell maps are by Sandro Botticelli, about 1485, and by Michelangelo Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, 1855. Every one of them is in the public domain, and each is credited where it appears. The files are hosted here rather than linked, so the map works when the classroom wifi does not.

The funnel itself is drawn to the plan Caetani used: Jerusalem above, the circles narrowing, Cocytus frozen at the center of the earth.

Cantos and canto numbers follow the Esolen translation, Modern Library. Reading dates come from our own Scope and Sequence.