Dante wanders lost in a dark wood and is blocked by three wild beasts from climbing a sunlit mountain.

The spirit of the Roman poet Virgil appears and offers to guide Dante through Hell to safety.

Dante and Virgil pass through the Gates of Hell and begin their journey into the underworld.

The ferryman Charon refuses to carry Dante across the Acheron, but Virgil invokes God's will and forces passage.

Dante awakens to find himself in Limbo, where virtuous pagans live in sad longing without physical torture.

Dante speaks with Francesca da Rimini, who describes how she and her lover Paolo fell into adultery while reading.

Overwhelmed by Francesca's story of doomed love, Dante faints and falls like a dead body to the ground.

Hostile demons bar the gates of the City of Dis against Dante and Virgil, threatening to strand Dante alone.

A heavenly angel arrives and opens the gates of the City of Dis, rebuking the demons for resisting God's will.

The heretic Farinata rises proudly from a burning tomb and quizzes Dante about his ancestry and family enemies.

Dante is shocked to recognize his beloved teacher Brunetto Latini running among the sodomites on burning sands.

Virgil negotiates passage with the monster Geryon, and the two travelers ride the beast in a spiraling descent into Malebolge.

Dante hears Ulysses speak from within a tongue of flame, describing his fatal final voyage beyond the known world.

Count Ugolino tells the story of being walled up with his sons by Archbishop Ruggieri and left to starve.

Dante and Virgil emerge from a tunnel into the open air of the southern hemisphere and see the stars.

Dante's Inferno begins with the poet lost and hopeless in a dark wood, blocked from safety by three terrifying beasts, until the spirit of Virgil arrives to guide him through Hell. Together they enter the underworld, crossing the river Acheron and descending through circles of increasingly severe sin, with Dante overcome by pity for Francesca's doomed love and stunned to encounter the proud Farinata in a burning tomb. The middle journey brings a crisis at the gates of the City of Dis, resolved only by a heavenly angel, and a shocking reunion with Dante's beloved teacher Brunetto Latini among the damned. As they descend deeper into fraud, Dante rides the monster Geryon into the evil pockets of Malebolge, where Ulysses speaks from flame about the fatal cost of boundless ambition. The journey ends in Cocytus, where Ugolino's horrific story of betrayal and starvation precedes the travelers' climb down Satan's frozen body and their emergence into the open air and the sight of the stars.

The essential journey from dark wood to starlight.

Dante sees the lukewarm souls running endlessly after a banner, stung by wasps and treading on worms.

Homer and the great pagan poets greet Dante in Limbo and welcome him as one of their number.

The glutton Ciacco prophecies that Florence's White Guelphs, Dante's faction, will eventually fall to the treacherous Blacks.

Virgil explains that Fortune is an angelic power distributing earthly goods, not a goddess humans can influence.

The boatman Phlegyas angrily ferries Dante and Virgil across the murky river Styx.

The three Furies appear on the battlements of Dis and threaten to summon Medusa to turn Dante to stone.

Dante and Virgil enter the City of Dis and find a vast cemetery of open burning stone tombs.

Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti rises desperately from a burning tomb, asking whether his son Guido is still alive.

The centaur Nessus guides Dante and Virgil along the boiling river of blood where violent souls are submerged.

Dante snaps a twig from a tree in the dark wood of suicides, causing it to bleed and cry out in pain.

The demon leader Malacoda grants Dante and Virgil passage through the bolgia of grafters and assigns them a demon escort.

The prophet Mohammad walks through a bolgia with his body grotesquely split open from chin to groin.

The schismatic Bertrand de Born walks carrying his own severed head like a lantern and names his punishment the contrapasso.

The giant Antaeus lifts Dante and Virgil down into the deepest pit of Cocytus at Virgil's polite request.

Dante and Virgil finally stand before Satan, a gigantic three-faced monster frozen in ice, gnawing three infamous traitors.

This pool traces the vivid secondary encounters and striking landscapes Dante discovers on his passage through every region of Hell. From the pitiful lukewarm souls chasing a banner on the outskirts to Homer and the great pagan poets welcoming Dante in Limbo's castle, the early circles offer unexpected gradations of damnation. Moving deeper, Dante witnesses Ciacco's grim political prophecy for Florence, a demonic boatman ferrying them across the Styx, and the eerie burning tombs of the City of Dis, where Cavalcante rises in desperation to ask about his living son. The middle circles bring grisly spectacle: a suicide tree bleeds at Dante's touch, grafters boil in pitch under demon guards, and the prophet Mohammad's split body embodies the punishment of those who sowed division. The descent concludes in the frozen pit of Cocytus, where the giant Antaeus gently lowers the travelers by hand before they confront Satan himself, a three-faced monster gnawing the world's most infamous traitors.

The sinners, guardians, and landscapes encountered across Hell's circles.

Virgil reveals that Dante's beloved Beatrice personally descended from Heaven into Limbo to ask him to guide Dante.

At the Acheron, Dante is overwhelmed and faints, waking to find himself mysteriously transported past the river.

Virgil reveals that a powerful figure once descended to Limbo and rescued the Old Testament patriarchs, referring to Christ.

Dante recognizes the proud Florentine Filippo Argenti rising from the Styx, insults him, and Virgil praises Dante's righteous anger.

Virgil covers Dante's eyes with his own hands to protect him from the Furies' threat of Medusa.

Farinata explains that souls in Hell can dimly see the future but are completely blind to the present.

The suicide Pier della Vigna explains how souls who take their own lives are condemned to grow into bleeding trees.

The blasphemer Capaneus continues defiantly scorning God even in Hell, worsening his own torment through unrepentant pride.

Virgil explains the Old Man of Crete, whose cracked body weeps the tears that form all of Hell's rivers.

Pope Nicholas III mistakes Dante for the still-living Pope Boniface VIII, revealing a long corrupt line of condemned pontiffs.

With pursuing demons close behind, Virgil scoops up Dante like a mother saving her child and leaps to safety.

The thief Vanni Fucci is consumed by snake venom and reforms from ash, then spitefully prophesies disaster for Dante.

Guido da Montefeltro confesses that Pope Boniface VIII corrupted him with a false advance absolution for a sinful act.

The friar Brother Alberigo reveals that some sinners' souls fall to Hell while their bodies remain alive on earth.

Gravity reverses as Dante and Virgil pass through the center of the earth by climbing down Satan's frozen body.

This pool gathers the key discoveries and pivotal moments that reveal how Dante's journey works on a deeper spiritual level. The relay of grace that brought Virgil to Dante — initiated by the Virgin Mary through Lucia and Beatrice — establishes from the start that this is no ordinary heroic quest but a divinely ordained rescue. Turning points test the travelers at every threshold: Virgil must cover Dante's eyes from Medusa, and when demons finally slam the gates of Dis, only a heavenly messenger can override them, exposing the limits of Virgil's classical wisdom. Revelations accumulate as the descent deepens, from Farinata's disclosure of how Hell perceives time, to the suicide Pier della Vigna explaining the transformation of souls into trees, to Pope Nicholas III's mistaken greeting exposing a corrupt papal lineage. The final sections bring Guido da Montefeltro's confession that Pope Boniface VIII offered a false absolution, Brother Alberigo's shocking revelation that some sinners fall to Hell before death, and ultimately the discovery that Satan's frozen body is itself the ladder by which gravity reverses and the travelers escape upward toward the stars.