UPDATE, NOVEMBER 8, 2013: The Florentine has just released its Inferno Florence Guide app. Written by TF editors, the guide takes you through the places of Inferno, giving you historical and visitor information about the locations experienced by the book’s protagonists to get to know Florence in depth. Download the app here.
With two-thirds of Dan Brown’s new mystery thriller Inferno set in Florence, and key scenes placed everywhere from the Boboli Gardens to Porta Romana and the Badia Fiorentina, the latest bestseller from the author of The Da Vinci Code has taken the world, and particularly Florence, by storm. Brown is clearly a fan of Florence, as he revealed at a press conference at Palazzo Vecchio on June 5: ‘Obviously Florence is a character in this novel, my favourite character … Certainly the most pleasurable part of writing this book was coming to Florence a number of times … and spending time here immersed in the history.’
Inferno is also piquing worldwide interest in the history of Florence. The plot revolves around Florentine Dante Alighieri’s masterpiece The Divine Comedy and the vision of Hell (Inferno) that it depicts.
As Robert Langdon and Sienna Brooks dash around the city’s historical sites and streets, solving in a race against time a mystery posed by an altered version of Botticelli’s Map of Hell, the reader is given an insight into the history, curiosities and artworks of Florence: ‘Originally the [Ponte Vecchio] had been home to Florence’s vast, open-air meat market, but the butchers were banished in 1593 after the rancid odor of spoiled meat had wafted up into the Vasari Corridor and assaulted the delicate nostrils of the grand duke’ (p. 142). In Palazzo Vecchio there was once an ‘artistic “showdown” spearheaded by Piero Soderini and Machiavelli, which pitted against each other two titans of the Renaissance—Michelangelo and Leonardo—commanding them to create murals on opposite walls of the same room’ (p. 151).
As Brown said on June 5, ‘To come here and absorb the flavor of the history, to stand in the spaces and piazzas where Dante, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Machiavelli stood is very, very inspirational, … It helps remind me that what I’m writing, although it’s about the past, is still alive, is still relevant and is still important to talk about. I guess this is my way of saying thank you to your country, to your culture, for inspiring so many people, myself included … No book, other than the Bible has inspired more art, music and literature than The Divine Comedy. Pretty impressive 700 years later!’
Brown also said, ‘In my books I write about the old and the new … I wanted to connect Dante to the modern world.’ To bring authentic contemporary Florentine life into his Dante-oriented thriller, Brown mentions some aspects of Florentine life that are familiar to many who know modern Florence: the English-language bookshop, the Paperback Exchange, which is ‘one of Langdon’s favorite bookshops’ (p. 220), and The Florentine, which Langdon consults online when, having lost his memory, he searches the Internet for clues as to why he is in Florence. ‘What happened last night? Langdon pushed on, accessing the Web site for The Florentine, an English-language newspaper published in Florence’ (p. 35).
Not only does the fictional Langdon search the pages of The Florentine for information on the city, but it appears that Brown himself found the paper useful in researching for Inferno. ‘Always the most interesting papers to me … are those that are insular, cultural, and smaller. About the people, for the people, by the people. I was familiar with The Florentine from a visit here two years ago, and also online, and it was enormously helpful, obviously, to get a flavor. I would not have included it if I were not a fan,’ he explained at Palazzo Vecchio.
Having already set Florence buzzing with his book, Brown hints that the city may soon have an influx of international celebrities. ‘Sony [Pictures] is very, very excited about making the Inferno movie, and if the city of Florence will have us, I imagine very soon you will have a lot of movie stars and cameras here in Florence, which I know is nothing new for you!’ he told the crowd.
