PREFACE.

The “Commune” of Florence has put up inscriptions from Dante’s Commedia to mark all the places mentioned in the great epic and all the sites, where stood the houses of the families alluded to.

Many of the verses convey but little or no meaning to one, who is not familiar with every line and every word of the famous poem.

I have therefore compiled this little guide-book to explain the “inscriptions from Dante in the streets of Florence” for those who have not the time to study them themselves. In doing so I have endeavoured to arrange the inscriptions—not in a topographical but rather in a chronological order, stringing them upon a historical thread, giving, as it were, a concise history of Florence up to the time of Dante, and thus establishing between the inscriptions—which may seem chosen at random to one who notices them, as he passes by them in the streets—that connection, which shows their real purpose, namely: to indicate what remains of the city, as Dante knew it, and thus evoke in the Florence of to-day Dante’s life there and that of his contemporaries.

Besides the arms put up by the Comune, I have given a few others; where the coat of arms is omitted, I did so, because in that case heraldry is uncertain.

Florence, October 1912.

FIORENZA