Casa di Dante

The truth is that we don’t know very much about Dante’s house. What you see here today is a reconstruction, more or less in the place where we think Dante used to live. Unfortunately, extant records are rather less than helpful.

The first we hear of the Alighieri property is in 1189, when the parishioners of the church of San Martino filed a complaint against the Alighieri for letting a fig tree stretch out over the public walkway. When all was said and done, they had to chop down the tree.

There is nothing else until 1277, when the same congregation chose members of the Alighieri and Donati (which shows how close these famous families live to one another) to represent their interests against the plan of the Badia to extend a wall into the street. In this same year, Dante was betrothed to Gemma Donati whom he will marry in 1285.

In 1332, Dante’s son Jacopo came to Florence to work out the details related to the division of the remaining property among Dante’s brother Francesco and his sons Jacopo and Pietro (both of whom wrote commentaries on their father’s masterpiece). Sadly, there is still no small amount of uncertainty related to the number of houses held by the Alighieri and which belonged to Dante.

On the outside of the south wall of the building is a plaque, placed there in 1911, that explains, albeit vaguely, why they chose this spot (above):

“MCMXI. The houses of Bello and Bellincione Alighieri stood side by side between the Church of San Martino del Vescovo and the houses of the Donati and Mardoli families, and Dante was born in this ancestral dwelling. The Commune of Florence acquired the site and built this house over the remains of the old ones as a public tribute to the divine poet” (trans. Mazzoni).

The museum inside is certainly worth the price of admission. It contains a wealth of information related to Dante’s life as well as a series of exhibits meant for a wide range of readers.