'The Love that Moves the Sun...'

Via Giuseppe Romita

Entrance to the Planetarium

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On September 14th 1321, the poet Dante Alighieri died in Ravenna, where he was buried. The author of La Divinia Commedia (The Divine Comedy) was fifty-six years old.   

Rome is the first city mentioned in The Divine Comedy, when Virgil appears to Dante in the first canto of the Inferno: 

Nacqui sub Iulio, ancor che fosse tardi,
e vissi a Roma sotto 'l buono Augusto, 
nel tempo de li dèi falsi e bugiardi. 
(I was born sub Julio, though late in his time,
and lived at Rome, under good Augustus
in an age of false and lying gods.)

Dante visited Rome in September 1301 as part of the embassy sent from Florence to Pope Boniface VIII. It is his only attested visit to the Eternal City. 

The entrance to what was once the Planetarium is inscribed with the very last line of Dante's Divina Commedia: 'L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle' ('The love that moves the sun and the other stars'). The door frame is decorated with the signs of the Zodiac. 

The Planetarium, once the largest in Europe, occupied the ancient Aula Ottagona, the octagonal hall of the Baths of Diocletian. 

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Bust of Dante, Passeggiata del Pincio