The Divine Comedy: Dante's Florence, Exile and Ravenna

Florence's octagonal Baptistery is where Dante was baptized, and he never stopped missing it. Exiled and far away, he hoped, in vain, to return as a poet and be crowned with laurel at his own baptismal font. The Baptistery is also the focus of the Festival of Saint John, still a holiday in Florence every 24 June. Everything in this route begins here, in the city that Dante described as his mother and that later cast him out.

Dante said he first saw Beatrice Portinari when he was nine. Years later he was married to Gemma Donati, and he never mentioned Gemma in any of his poems. Santa Margherita dei Cerchi is said, contentiously, to be where the wedding took place in 1285 or 1290. It holds Portinari tombs, the family of Beatrice, and visitors still leave handwritten letters to her in a basket beside her shrine.

Location precision: Tradition says Dante married here, but his marriage date is unknown and the claim is contested; the pin marks the church tied to the Donati and Portinari families.

Visitor guidance: The church is a short walk from the Baptistery.

In March 1302 the victorious Black Guelphs condemned Dante, a White Guelph, to two years of exile and a heavy fine. He did not pay, so the sentence became perpetual, and return would have meant the stake. The Bargello was built to house Florence's podestà, the highest magistrate, and Cante dei Gabrielli held that office under the new government. Dante never saw Florence again. In 2008 the city council rescinded the sentence.

Location precision: The sources do not say where the sentence was handed down; the pin marks the Bargello, the palace built for the city's podestà.

Visitor guidance: The Bargello is a national museum; its Magdalen Chapel holds Giotto's frescos with a portrait of Dante.

Francesca da Polenta, a noblewoman of Ravenna, was married to Giovanni Malatesta of Rimini and was murdered by him when he found her with his brother Paolo. In Inferno V she tells Dante her story in the whirlwind of the lustful: "Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize," took hold of her. Gradara is famous as the location of the episode, though Dante names no castle. Dante probably heard the tale from her nephew, his Ravenna host.

Location precision: Gradara is the traditional site of the episode; Dante himself names only her birthplace on the Po shore.

In 1288 Count Ugolino and his sons and grandsons were shut in the Muda, a Gualandi tower in Pisa. In March 1289 the keys were thrown into the Arno and the prisoners left to starve. In Inferno XXXIII Ugolino tells the story to Dante, in the ice, while gnawing the skull of the archbishop who ordered it. The tower, he says, "Which bears because of me the title of Famine," had already shown him many moons through its window.

Location precision: The pin marks Piazza dei Cavalieri in Pisa, standing for the Gualandi tower; the tower's exact spot is not given here.

In Purgatorio V, among souls who died by violence, a woman asks Dante to remember her: "Siena made me, unmade me Maremma.". Tradition names her Pia de' Tolomei, supposedly murdered in 1295 by her husband from the Maremma. The Tolomei built their palace in Siena in 1270 to 1275; it is one of the city's oldest. The poem gives only her first name, so the identification and the pin are tradition, not proof.

Location precision: Dante names only 'la Pia'; the link to the Tolomei family and this palace is traditional.

After the death of Henry VII in 1313 ended Dante's hope of going home, he returned to Verona, where Cangrande I della Scala let him live in certain security. He thanked his host by placing Cangrande in his Paradise. Cangrande's own tomb, built in the 14th century, is held up by richly harnessed dogs, a pun on his name, which means Big dog. Dante's patron still lies among the Scaligers.

Location precision: Dante lived in Verona under the Scaligers, but the sources name no address; the pin marks the Scaliger Tombs.

Visitor guidance: The Scaliger Tombs stand in the centre of Verona.

Guido II da Polenta invited Dante to Ravenna in 1318. He died there on 14 September 1321, aged about 56, of malaria caught returning from Venice, and his funeral was held in the Franciscan church of San Francesco. He lies in an ancient Roman sarcophagus beside it. In 1519 the friars hid his bones in a wall before Florence's delegation arrived; they were found by chance in 1865 and hidden in the garden for safety in 1944–45. A lamp burns there, fed by Florentine oil every 14 September.

Visitor guidance: The tomb stands beside the basilica; a lamp burns there, fed by Florentine oil.

Florence built Dante a tomb in Santa Croce in 1829, among its other greatly honoured citizens. It has been empty ever since, because his body stayed in Ravenna. Its front reads Onorate l'altissimo poeta, "Honor the most exalted poet", a line taken from the fourth canto of the Inferno. The exile ends here with a city honouring a man it once condemned, with nothing inside.

Visitor guidance: Santa Croce is open to visitors; the tomb is in the nave.