A guided tour of Verona: Dante’s city, not just Juliet’s

Almost everyone knows that Verona is the city of Romeo and Juliet. Very few people know that it is also the city of Dante — and that Italy’s greatest medieval poet spent almost half of his exile here, writing a fundamental part of the Divine Comedy in its streets.

When you arrive in Verona planning to visit Juliet’s balcony, it is hard to imagine that those same medieval alleyways, those same squares, were once the setting for one of the most remarkable encounters in the history of Italian literature: the meeting between the greatest poet of the Middle Ages and one of the most powerful princes of northern Italy. An encounter that changed the Commedia, and perhaps Verona too.

Dante in Verona: nearly half an exile

In 1302, Dante Alighieri is condemned to exile from his native Florence. He will never return. Over the following two decades, he moves from court to court in search of shelter and patronage. But no stage of his exile is as long or as productive as Verona.

He arrives for the first time in 1303, as the guest of Bartolomeo della Scala, lord of the city. He returns from 1312 to 1318, this time hosted by Bartolomeo’s brother Cangrande. In total, he spends approximately seven years in Verona — nearly half of his entire exile. This is not a minor footnote: it is in Verona that Dante writes much of the Paradiso, the final and most complex canticle of the Commedia. And that is no coincidence.

At that moment, Verona is at the height of its power. Under the Scaligeri, it has become one of the most vibrant cultural centres in Italy: a court open to artists, intellectuals and political exiles. A place where Dante can read, study, write — and where he finds the freedom that Florence has denied him.

Cangrande della Scala: the patron immortalised in Paradise

The relationship between Dante and Cangrande della Scala is one of the most fascinating in Italian cultural history. Cangrande was an extraordinary prince: a skilled military commander, a shrewd politician, and an extraordinarily generous patron. Boccaccio would later describe him as ‘one of the most magnificent lords that had been known in Italy since Emperor Frederick II’.

Dante first meets him during his initial stay, when Cangrande is still a boy. But it is during the second stay, from 1312 onwards, that the two become close. Cangrande hosts the poet in his palace — today the Palazzo del Podestà on Piazza dei Signori — and supports him financially, even funding the studies of Dante’s son Pietro at the University of Bologna.

Dante’s acknowledgement is absolute: he dedicates the entire Paradiso to Cangrande in a celebrated letter in which he praises him as the prince who might have brought peace to Italy. And in Canto XVII of the Paradiso, Dante’s ancestor Cacciaguida prophesies the Veronese refuge in words still inscribed on a plaque in Piazza dei Signori today: ‘Lo primo tuo refugio e ‘l primo ostello / sarà la cortesia del gran Lombardo / che ‘n su la scala porta il santo uccello’ — the first refuge and first lodging you will find will be the courtesy of the great Lombard.

According to Boccaccio, Dante would send Cangrande six to eight cantos of the Paradiso at a time before publishing them. The prince was his first reader.

Dante’s places in Verona: a hidden map in the city

Walking through Verona’s historic centre with this knowledge transforms the experience entirely. Almost every corner conceals a Dantesque reference.

Piazza dei Signori — which the people of Verona simply call Piazza Dante — is the heart of the route. At its centre stands the statue of the poet, erected in 1865 in an act that contemporaries considered subversive: dedicating a monument to the father of the Italian language while Verona was still under Habsburg rule was a bold statement of national belonging. The Scaligeri palaces surrounding the square were where Dante lived. A plaque bearing the verses of Cacciaguida marks his presence.

Close by, the Arche Scaligere — the extraordinary Gothic funerary complex of the Scaligeri — hold the tombs of Bartolomeo and Cangrande, Dante’s two patrons. Dante never saw them: the Arche were built in the 1330s, after his death. But he certainly prayed in the small church of Santa Maria Antica beside them, the private chapel of the Scaligeri family.

Still more surprising is the connection with Piazza delle Erbe. This was the neighbourhood of the Montecchi — the Ghibelline family Dante mentions in the Purgatorio alongside their rivals, the Cappelletti. The tower-house at Via Cappello 23, today visited by millions as Juliet’s House, truly did belong to a family that was the adversary of the Montecchi. Dante walked through this neighbourhood fully aware of the factional violence that ran through it.

The Palio, the Inferno, and a race that ended up in literature

There is a detail of everyday Veronese life that Dante transformed into one of the most vivid passages of the Inferno.

Verona had held an ancient Palio for centuries: a footrace along the Via Postumia, whose prize was a length of prized green woollen cloth. Dante witnessed this race during his stay and was so struck by it that he used it as a metaphor in Canto XV of the Inferno, describing the souls of sinners running under a rain of fire: ‘Poi si rivolse, e parve di coloro / che corrono a Verona il drappo verde / per la campagna’ — and then he turned and seemed like one of those who race for the green cloth at Verona across the fields.

Today, near Porta Borsari — one of the ancient Roman gateways, on the route of the old Palio — an inscription on the wall carries those verses. Almost no tourist ever notices it. It is exactly the kind of detail you discover only with a guide who knows where to look.

The Quaestio and Dante’s final act in Verona

On 7 January 1320, Dante returns to Verona for one last visit. In the church of Sant’Elena, adjoining the Biblioteca Capitolare, he delivers a public lecture before the city’s canons and intellectuals: the so-called Quaestio de Aqua et Terra, a treatise on physics and cosmology.

He hoped to secure a teaching post at Verona’s higher school. It did not happen: the appointment went to a certain Artemisio, a master of logic. Dante left Verona for Ravenna, where he died the following year.

The Biblioteca Capitolare, which Dante almost certainly frequented during his stay — it held copies of Livy, Pliny and other classical authors he cites in his works — is still open to visitors. It is recognised as the oldest continuously operating library in the world, founded in 517 AD. Among its treasures it holds the Indovinello Veronese, the earliest known written example of the Italian vernacular language.

Dante’s heirs still live in Verona

The story of Dante in Verona did not end with his death. His sons Pietro and Jacopo joined him in the city, and Pietro settled there permanently, becoming a notary thanks to Scaligeri support. The family established themselves in a palace opposite the church of Santa Anastasia — the building still stands today. Inside the church of San Fermo, the Alighieri family chapel is still visible, with a large Florentine lily carved into the gable.

Pietro later bought an estate at Gargagnago in the Valpolicella. Five centuries later, in 1500, the last descendant to bear the Alighieri name — Ginevra — married Marcantonio Serego. To preserve the famous surname, the house of Serego Alighieri was founded. The family still produces wine in the Valpolicella today, including a celebrated Amarone. Dante’s name is still, quite literally, rooted in this land.