Visions of Dante

Dante’s effect on tourism began long before the twentieth century. However, the massive scale and democratization of travel to Dante’s homeland in our own time has made it necessary to cater to the crowds and has brought the poet international celebrity status.

This serialized Dante adaptation made Mickey Mouse marketable to Italian parents. Martina used “high culture” in a funny, non-pedantic way, to make comics “educational in some sense.” (Francesco Stajano). Because all schoolchildren were required to study the Divine Comedy, Dante made Mickey look respectable to Italian parents who had mixed feelings about the “Americanization” of society after World War II.

In 1962, the Tourism Office in Florence began to lobby the city to remove the statue of Dante which had been installed at the center of Piazza Santa Croce in 1865 with the support of the oldest and most prestigious Florentine families.

Proponents of the displacement of the statue wanted to use the piazza to organize calcio (football) games in traditional costume. Even though the disastrous flood of the Arno postponed the move, the statue was eventually relocated to the steps of the basilica on May 28, 1968.

This decision caused an uproar. The epigraph to this “white book” (a kind of official exposé prepared by independent experts), funded by three hundred citizens, cited Dante’s own outrage against the Florentines in Inferno canto 15, when he called them ”That ungrateful, and malignant people…”

Paris has the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower. Florence has Dante and the great dome of Florence Cathedral.