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Italian poet, scholar, writer, philosopher and politician, Dante Alighieri, is one of the founding fathers of the Italian language, along with Petrarch and Boccaccio—the so called 'tre corone della lingua Italiana'. This year marks the 700th anniversary of Dante's passing. Known as 'il somma poeta'—the supreme poet—he is best known worldwide for his masterpiece La Divina Commedia.The Divine Comedy is a landmark of Italian literature and universally considered as one of world literature's greatest poems. Divided into three sections—Inferno, or hell; Purgatorio, or purgatory; and Paradiso, or paradiseThe Divine Comedy presents an encyclopaedic overview of the attitudes, beliefs, aspirations and material aspects of the medieval world.

Born in Florence around 1265, Dante grew up among Florentine aristocracy. He received formal instruction in grammar, language and philosophy at one of the Franciscan schools of the city. At the age of nine he purportedly glimpsed the eight-year-old Beatrice Portinari and, struck by her beauty, fell in love. During his teens, Dante demonstrated a keen interest in literature. In 1287, Dante enrolled in the University of Bologna, but by 1289 he enlisted in the Florentine army and took part in the Battle of Campaldino, one of the most important battles in medieval Italy, between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

After the premature death of Beatrice in 1290, Dante committed himself to the study of the philosophical works of Boethius, Cicero and Aristotle and earnestly wrote poetry, establishing his own poetic voice in innovative canzoni, or lyrical poems. The Divine Comedy, an imagined journey through hell and purgatory to heaven, is rich in science, astronomy and philosophy and rooted in 13th century Catholicism and Italian politics. TheDivine Comedy is among the greatest works of all medieval European literature and is a profound Christian vision of humankind's temporal and eternal destiny. On its most personal level, it draws on Dante's own experience of exile from his native city of Florence. On its most comprehensive level, it may be read as an allegory, taking the form of a journey through hell, purgatory and paradise. The poem amazes with its array of learning, its penetrating and comprehensive analysis of contemporary problems and its inventiveness of language and imagery.

Hell, the most popular and widely studied cantos of The Divine Comedy, recounts Dante's travels through the different regions of hell, led by his mentor and protector, the Roman poet Virgil. Constructed as a huge funnel with nine descending circular ledges, Dante's hell features a vast, meticulously organised torture chamber in which sinners, carefully classified according to the nature of their sins, suffer hideous punishment, often depicted with ghoulish attention to detail. Sinners who recognise and repudiate their sins are given the opportunity to attain paradise through the arduous process of purification, which continues in purgatory. A shift from human reason to divine revelation takes place in purgatory, where penitents awaiting the final journey to paradise continually reaffirm their faith and atone for the sins they committed on earth. A mood of brotherly love, modesty and longing for God prevails in purgatory. Although in hell Virgil, a symbol of human reason, helps Dante understand sin, in purgatory the poet needs a more powerful guide who represents faith: his beloved Beatrice. Finally, paradise manifests the process of spiritual regeneration and purification required to meet God, who rewards the poet with perfect knowledge.

By choosing to write his poem in the Italian vernacular rather than in Latin, Dante decisively influenced the course of literary development. He primarily used the Tuscan dialect, which would become standard literary Italian, but his vivid vocabulary ranged widely over many dialects and languages. Not only did he lend a voice to the emerging lay culture of his own country; Italian became the literary language in western Europe for several centuries.

Near the end of his life, Dante settled in Ravenna, where he died on 14 September 1321. The Divine Comedy caused an immediate sensation during his life, and Dante's fame has been celebrated across the centuries. Many scholars have examined the structural unity of the poem, discussing the relationship between medieval symbolism and allegory within the poem's three sections, and have explored Dante's narrative strategy. Others have marvelled at the seemingly inexhaustible formal and semantic richness of Dante's text. With its various enigmatic layers of philological and philosophical complexities, The Divine Comedy has been scrutinised by critics, literary theorists, linguists and philosophers, who have cherished the immortal work precisely because it translates the harsh truth about the human condition into a poetics of timeless beauty.

Dante helped to give shape to and stabilise his vernacular as a medium of literary expression. As an exponent and user of the dolce stil nuovo he shaped a rubric of diction that influenced poets well into the Renaissance, starting from Petrarch. His moulding of terza rima had a lasting and fruitful influence on many authors. He was among the great pioneers in the sonnet form, and his practice with regard to structure, form and diction made their mark on later writers like Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo.

Dante's words also fed the creative imagination of visual artists, who have sought to illustrate his text through a wide variety of media. Almost immediately after his work was completed, images were created to accompany his masterpiece. More than 40 illuminated manuscripts of The Divine Comedy were produced before the advent of the printing press in the late 15th century. When the potential for faster reproduction of books, including illustrated books, became a reality, Dante's imagination, sometimes intertwined with the imagination of an artist rendering a visual interpretation of his words, reached an even larger audience than before. For instance, in the 1480s, the same decade he painted some of his most famous works, Primavera and The Birth of Venus, Botticelli undertook the task of painting not only hell but the entire The Divine Comedy.

Italy celebrates the supreme poet's genius every year on 25 March on Dantedi, the national day dedicated to Dante Alighieri. It is a date specifically chosen because it is recognised by scholars as the day the poet started his journey in the afterlife in The Divine Comedy.

In addition to poetry, Dante wrote important theoretical works, ranging from discussions of rhetoric to moral philosophy and political thought. He was fully conversant with the classical tradition, drawing for his own purposes on such writers as Virgil and Cicero. But, most unusual for a layman, he also had an impressive command of scholastic philosophy and theology. His learning and his personal involvement in the heated political controversies of his age led him to the composition of De Monarchia, one of the major tracts of medieval political philosophy.

In 2021, Anno Dantesco, the Year of Dante, Italy is commemorating the 700th anniversary of his passing in Ravenna, with a number of events taking place across the globe. In particular, Accademia della Crusca, the world's leading authority and research centre on Italian language, is also celebrating Dante's 700th anniversary by publishing a new word or expression coined by the poet for each day of 2021, accompanied by an explanation on its website.

I, too, have had the privilege of studying Dante's work, both in high school and as part of my university studies. It remains for me one of the seminal works not only of Italian literature but also of the history of world literature. And so, 700 years on, I would urge people to go back, as I will to my dog-eared copy of La Divina Commedia, and once again relive the mastery of this giant of literature. He truly is the supreme poet.