Pistoia

Description

In canto XXIV of the Inferno, while he is among the thieves of the seventh bolgia, Dante listens to the confession of the damned soul Vanni Fucci. The latter, after cursing God and revealing his own sins, points to Pistoia as the place where he found refuge, defining it with the periphrasis «worthy den». The image helps to outline the wickedness attributed by Dante to the Tuscan city, in keeping with a vision consistent with the representation of Guelph and Ghibelline cities in the cantos devoted to civil divisions. Within the moral structure of the poem, Pistoia is thus evoked as a place of refuge for a sinner, in a passage that interweaves real geography and allegorical meaning.