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Ten strange things you never knew about Dante

Italy is very proud of Dante degli Alghieri - you can just call him Dante - but who was he and how much do we actually know about him?

Published: 21 January 2016 08:40 CET
Updated: 25 March 2021 17:44 CET

Ten strange things you never knew about Dante

A Dante mural in his hometown of Florence. Photo: Vincenzo Pinto/AFP

He had a wife and four kids

A lot of Dante’s work is devoted to Beatrice, a woman he met aged nine and who died young, sending the poet into deep grief. He wrote love sonnets dedicated to her perfection and in the Divine Comedy, it’s Beatrice in angel form who guides him through Paradise and to God.

It all sounds pretty romantic – until you discover he had a wife and four kids back home, who were probably not best pleased at the fact they don’t get so much as a mention in his famous epic. Dante married Gemma Donati after being betrothed to her at the age of 12, and they had four children together: Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni, and Antonia, who later became a nun, coincidentally adopting the name Sister Beatrice.

*Dante in a painting by Raphael, c.1510*

He was a physician, politician and soldier

Thought all Dante did was sit around writing poetry? Think again – Dante actually led a very active life.

He trained as a physicist and joined the guild of apothecaries, though he only did this to further his political career. Dante held various public offices throughout his time in Florence, and fought in the Battle of Campaldino against Arezzo.

He was given a death sentence and only pardoned in 2008

Dante lived in a time when his hometown, Florence, was going through political turmoil and in-fighting.

When a rival faction gained control of the city, they exiled the poor guy from his hometown for barratry, which Dante insisted was just a cover-up for political persecution. All his properties were confiscated and he was issued with a sentence of being burnt at the stake if he ever returned.

It wasn’t until 2008 that Florence’s city council decided it was time to let it go, and they passed a motion officially pardoning their most famous resident.

His bones went missing for centuries

Dante was still in exile when he died of malaria, and was buried at a church in Ravenna, where he had been living at the time. Florence later decided they wanted to bury Dante in their own city, where they built him a spectacular tomb. Michelangelo and even Pope Leo X campaigned for the poet’s remains to be returned to his hometown, but the sneaky Ravenna monks simply sent an empty coffin, having found a hiding place in a cloister wall for Dante’s bones.

These were not discovered until 1865 by accident during construction works, and were re-buried in the Ravenna mausoleum – though they were moved during the Second World War out of fear the tomb would get damaged in the bombing.

The plaque commemorating Dante’s burial site during World War II. Photo: By Flying Russian – CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia

Dante had a great memory

There’s a spot in Florence, currently marked by a plaque, where Dante supposedly liked to sit and write his love poems about Beatrice while watching the construction of the Duomo. According to anecdote, he was once asked by a passerby what he ate for breakfast. “Eggs,” replied Dante.

A year later, the same man walked past Dante again, sitting on his favourite rock, and tested the poet’s already notorious memory. “How?” asked the man, to which Dante quickly responded: “With salt.”

He was famous for telling the truth

Yes, that’s the same Dante who swears several times that his journey through the afterlife literally took place. Truth is a big theme in his Divine Comedy and he repeatedly begs his readers to believe him, most notably right before he and the dead Roman poet Virgil jump on the back of a half-man, half-snake monster, which dutifully carries them down to the eighth circle of hell.

We’re supposed to believe this, not just because of his vivid descriptions, but also because the historic Dante had a reputation as an honest man through his work as a public official. One legend states that, when exiled from Florence, a disguised Dante was stopped by authorities asking if he knew where Dante was. Despite his life being at stake, Dante was apparently so determined not to fib that he tricked them by saying: “When I was coming down the road, he did not pass me.”

You’ve probably quoted Dante without realizing

If you speak Italian, that is. Considered the ‘father of the Italian language’, Dante and his Divine Comedy paved the way for writing literature in the vernacular language, which had previously been considered too lowly.

Historical word frequency lists show us that approximately 15 percent of the vocabulary in use in standard Italian today can be traced back to the Florentine poet. That includes neologisms (words he invented) and even several complete phrases which survive today, such as ‘vendetta allegra’ (roughly ‘sweet revenge’).

And you’ve definitely heard him being quoted

Dante’s Divine Comedy has spawned many English translations ranging from the erudite to slang versions, comic books, TV and radio adaptations and even video games. Novelists including Chaucer, T.S. Eliot, Jorge Luis Borges, Lemony Snicket and Philip Pullman are among the many who have found inspiration between the pages of Dante’s books.

And aside from the film adaptations, it’s also referenced or quoted in Ice Age, Hannibal and Ghostbusters II, and in TV series such as Mad Men, How I Met Your Mother, The Sopranos and Law & Order. But perhaps most impressive homage of all is the asteroid belt 2999 Dante, named after the poet.

He was ahead of his time

*Portrait of Dante (Study), Ilya Repin, 1897*

Anyone who has attempted to tackle his lengthy works might not think of Dante as a ‘modern’ writer, but in several respects he was extremely advanced.

Aside from being one of the first Italian writers to move away from using Latin for literature, he was one of the first to come up with an idea of a Limbo, where noble and innocent people who were not Christian could rest in peace. Before this, it was generally thought that unborn babies and pagans ended up in hell. Dante was also tolerant towards other religions, for example placing Muslim leader Saladin in Limbo.

However, the work was written in a medieval context and for this reason Gherush92, an Italian NGO, has campaigned for it to be banned from the classroom due to perceived racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism.

Three was his lucky number

You may already know that Dante’s most famous work is split into three parts (one for each section of the afterlife), and each of these is split into 33 verses or ‘canti’ – plus an introductory one to make 100 in total, the ‘perfect number’.

But the number three crops up much more often than that; his rhyme scheme, terza rima, revolves around it and the Holy Trinity has infernal counterparts in the three rivers of hell, three kinds of sins punished (each with three subdivisions), a three-headed beast guarding the Circle of Gluttonous and in many other instances.

Bonus fact: Dante was a Gemini

Dante tells us this early on in Inferno. If you’re keen on astrology, that means he’s independent, witty and imaginative, but restless – sounds about right for the guy who went on a journey through hell and wrote a book about it.

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Ice to AC: Nine of the most common American misconceptions about Italy

It’s no secret that Americans love to visit Italy; the Washington Post predicted in December that the country would be Americans’ top foreign tourist destination for 2023, and the volume of US visitors who’ve arrived in Italy since then appears to have borne this out.

But while many Americans have a deep knowledge of – and love for – Italian culture, there are some surprisingly enduring myths about Italy that can be found in the USA specifically.

Some come close to the truth, while others fall wide of the mark.

There is no ice in Europe/Italian restaurants charge for ice

Fiction – Americans love ice, beverages are routinely served with it and refrigerators in the US often have some type of ice dispenser attached to the door.

But in Italy, ice is simply less prioritised. While ice in your drink will usually not cost you extra, you might need to specifically request it. Soft drinks in Italy are usually served without ice, so if you want your beverage iced, you need to request the drink con ghiaccio – with ice.

A classic Italian spritz should always come with ice. Photo by Tomasz Rynkiewicz on Unsplash

Italian homes don’t have dryers

Fact (mostly) – Tumble dryers do exist in Italy, but they’re rare. A survey published by Italy’s national statistics office (Istat) in 2014 found that just 3.3 percent of Italian households had one, whereas 96.2 percent had a washing machine and 39.3 percent a dishwasher.

Those washing lines strung with laundry hanging above the heads of passers by aren’t there just to create a quaint backdrop for photos – people make wide use of the abundant sun to air dry their clothes and sheets.

That does not mean that Italians in cities don’t occasionally use clothes dryers though if they’re in a rush; some might take items to a nearby laundromat.

McDonald’s is healthier in Italy

Fact (sort of) – McDonald’s uses different ingredients based on the country, and the Big Mac in Italy is (slightly) healthier than the one sold in the United States. It is slightly less calorific, with 509 kCal in contrast to the American Big Mac’s 540 kCal per 100g.

The Italian Big Mac also has less salt and fat, but it does not compare to the world’s healthiest Big Mac (found in Israel).

McDonald’s in Italy also uses EU-sourced ingredients, and the EU restricts the usage of additives and growth hormones. For example Azodicarbonamide which is used to bleach flour, is banned in the EU, but not in the United States, where McDonald’s was still using it as of 2016.

It is true, however, that you can buy beer in McDonald’s in Italy.

McDonald’s burgers are marginally healthy in Italy compared to the US. Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Italians drive small cars

Fiction (increasingly) – Think of Italian cars, and you might picture a classic Fiat 500 puttering around picturesque cobbled streets – but that’s all changing.

2021 was a historic year for the Italian automotive industry: the sale of SUVs surpassed those of medium-sized sedans for the first time, claiming 48 percent of the market share compared to the sedan’s 45 percent.

That may not match the US, where SUVs and pick-up trucks currently account for around 73 percent of vehicles sold, but it’s a huge increase from 2012, when SUVs made up just 17 percent of vehicle sales in Italy.

There are no free public toilets

Fact (mostly) – You will occasionally find an Italian town or city that offers some free public toilets. For the most part though, you’ll have to pay, including in train stations – and even paid public toilets are few and fair between.

Instead, you’re better off heading to one of the many caffe-bars found all over the country and paying for a euro for a bottle of water or a coffee so you can use their facilities – if you ask nicely, you might even be allowed to go for free.

Metro stations, supermarkets and grocery stores tend to not have any toilets at all, and neither will most clothing stores. One place you will find plenty of free public bathrooms, though, is a motorway service station.

Something that strikes many visitors to Italy as odd is the lack of seats on public toilets. Exactly why this is the case is debated, but there’s a general consensus that the phenomenon has rapidly accelerated in the past couple of decades.

A street sign at an antiques fair in Turin. Free toilets in Italy are few and far between. Photo by rashid khreiss on Unsplash

Italy doesn’t have air conditioning

Fact (sort of) – There’s not no air conditioning in Italy – in fact data from Italy’s national statistics office showed that one in two Italian households had AC in 2021.

It’s far less popular than in the US, though, where 90 percent of households have air conditioning. There’s still not much of a culture of AC in Italy, where many believe it will give you a colpo d’aria leading to at best a sore neck and at worst pneumonia – so even households that have a unit tend to use it sparingly.

If your hotel or Airbnb doesn’t specifically mention AC, you can assume it doesn’t have it.

Coca-Cola tastes different in Italy

Fact – While Coke is available almost everywhere in the world, the actual ingredients in Coca-Cola are different in some countries, which could lead some Coke connoisseurs to notice a difference in taste between the products in the US and those in the EU.

The biggest difference is the regular Coke – in the US this uses high fructose corn syrup while in Europe cane sugar is used to sweeten the product, resulting in a significant difference in taste.

You’re much more likely in Italy to come across Coca Zero, the zero-sugar version of Coca-Cola, than Coca-Coca Light, the European version of Diet Coke, which has always been hard to find and which some online sources say Italy stopped distributing altogether in 2022.

Coke in the US: different to its European counterparts. Photo by Cody Engel on Unsplash

You don’t need to tip

Fact – It’s not necessary to tip after a restaurant meal in Italy. However, this is a matter of personal choice and you are free to do so (tipping certainly won’t cause upset).

Diners do often leave some change after a particularly enjoyable meal. In terms of how much to give, some people round up a bill to include a tip, while others give what spare change they have.

Some people may also opt to tip other professionals as well, such as taxi drivers and cleaners, but again – this is optional and typically not a large quantity. In some apartment buildings, residents may give a Christmas card with money inside to the portiere (doorman) as a kind of annual tip.

All cars are stick shift

Mostly fact – In the United States, stick shift vehicles are becoming a thing of the past, but in Italy they are still very much being bought and driven.

As of 2018, around 20 percent of new cars sold in Italy were automatic – which is much higher than the less-than-one percent sold in the 1980s, but still a lot less than the US’s figure of 96 percent.

That said, around 70 percent of SUVs sold in Italy use automatic transition, so with the popularity of these larger vehicles on the rise, you can expect to see more automatics on Italian roads in the future.

What do you think? Have you noticed any other common beliefs or misconceptions about Italy in the US, or elsewhere? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

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