Walk Dante's Inferno, through the nine circles
Midway through his life, Dante takes a wrong turning and finds the gate of Hell. Your everyday steps take you down through it with Virgil and out the other side of the world, and the poem unlocks circle by circle.
- 7,918 miles
- 9 stops
- Dante Alighieri, c. 1320
Straight through the earth
Halfway through his life Dante takes a wrong turning into a wood, and comes out at a gate with bad news written over it. The only route here whose length is fixed by physics: down to the centre of the earth and out the far side, one diameter, with no way back up.
Inferno is the one route in the library whose length is set by physics. Dante's Hell is a funnel reaching to the centre of the earth. At the bottom he and Virgil climb down the Devil's body, turn round at the centre, and climb up the far side to see the stars again. That is one diameter of the earth, 7,918 miles, walked on a map drawn by hand, because this is one place no atlas has.
On the way down are the gate with its famous inscription, Charon's ferry across the Acheron, Francesca in the whirlwind, the burning city of Dis, Ulysses in his tongue of flame and, at the very bottom, not fire but ice. The text is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation, the first complete American one, published in 1867.
- Distance
- 7,918 miles (12,742 km)
- Stops
- 9, each with its own passage and plate
- Map
- Drawn by hand
- Text
- Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Project Gutenberg ebook #1001
Where it starts
Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear.
Inferno, Canto I · translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This is the passage Bematist gives you the moment you set out. The other 8 wait at the places they happened, and the only way to read them is to walk there.
How long would Hell take you?
Dante's journey lasts from Good Friday to Easter morning. At true scale, yours would take years. Choose when you'd like to see the stars again and Bematist sets the pace from how much you already walk.
A rough guide, at about 0.75 m a step. In the app the pace comes from your own 30-day average in Apple Health, and stays fixed for the whole journey.
On the way
The words, at the places
9 passages, each waiting where it happened. You can see how far away the next one is, but not what it says.
Walk it with friends
Send a link and walk the same road together, each of you on your own streets, wherever you live.
No streak to lose
Steps come straight from Apple Health. A quiet day is just a short one, and your place on the road only moves forward.
More roads like this one
See the whole library, with a new book every month, chosen by walkers' vote.
Set out through the dark wood.
7,918 miles of Inferno, on the walks you already take.
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