Ceggia, Oriago and Venice represent the literary park of Purgatory, the park of carnival and community.
Dante’s life and literary work are intertwined with numerous connections and references to the Venetian area. During his exile, Dante undoubtedly visited Treviso, where he was a guest of Gherardo III da Camino, whom he praises in Canto XVI of Purgatory; Verona, where he was welcomed by Bartolomeo and Cangrande della Scala (Purgatory, XVII); and Venice, where, according to tradition, he stayed as a guest of the Doge at Palazzo Soranzo.
There, he was particularly impressed by the Arsenal, which he vividly describes in Canto XXI of Inferno. The shipyard’s pitch is used as a comparison with the boiling pitch in the ditch where corrupt officials are punished. Venice was also the last city Dante visited as an envoy of Ravenna’s ruler, Guido Novello da Polenta; on his return from this mission, he lost his life in 1321.
The city is also mentioned in Canto IX of Paradise, where Dante uses the word “Rialto” to refer to the entire lagoon settlement, and in Canto XIX of Paradise, where he refers to Venetian coinage.
The area of Ceggia and Oriago appears in Canto V of Purgatory as the setting for the murder of the Milanese podestà Jacopo di Uguccione del Cassero. In 1298, Azzo VIII, Marquis of Ferrara, ordered his murder in the local marshes.
These stories connect Ceggia, Oriago and Venice in a shared space of memory, journeys and encounters. Today, this tradition is also carried on by Ceggia’s historic Carnival, which, as a celebration of the community, keeps alive the spirit of transformation, creativity and shared cultural heritage.
Dante’s narrative is further enriched by numerous Venetian authors, from Carlo Goldoni to Andrea Zanzotto and others, who have significantly shaped the literary identity of this area.
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Continue to the chapter Dante’s Purgatory: Carnival and Community for more content.
A miniature from the famous Paris Dante codex depicts the beginning of Purgatorio, the second part of Dante's Divine Comedy. The codex, linked to Izola, represents a valuable testimony to the spread of Dante's work in the northern Adriatic.
The commemorative plaque on the façade of Villa Moro in Oriago quotes the tercets from Inferno (V, 79–84), which mention the bloody murder of Jacopo di Uguccione del Cassero, the future Podestà of Milan, at the hands of Azzo VIII d’Este, Lord of Ferrara. It was near Oriago, on the banks of the canal where the Brenta bends towards the sea, that Jacopo breathed his last – wounded, covered in mud and his own blood.
In Canto XVI of Inferno, Dante describes the burning sands of the sixth circle, where those who have committed violence against their loved ones are punished. To make the scene more vivid, he compares them to the embankments built in the Flemish lands between Wissant and Bruges, and to those along the Brenta River, which flows near Mira.
In Paradiso IX, 25–27, Dante evokes Venice through the word “Rialto”, the heart of the ancient lagoon settlement. Through this metonymy, the poet refers to a vast territory stretching from the commercial centre of the Serenissima to the Alpine sources of the Brenta and Piave rivers. It was both a real and symbolic landscape, which, according to Dante, was nevertheless marked by profound spiritual decline.
