Dante's Seat

Walking Tours of Florence

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At the base of a building on the south side of Piazza del Duomo there is a large plaque inscribed with the words 'SASSO DI DANTE’ (Stone of Dante).

The plaque marks the spot which purports to be the location of a stone on which the poet Dante (1265-1321) sat while watching work proceed on the new cathedral.
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Dante Alighieri, Florence's most illustrious son, was thirty-one years old when the foundation stone of Santa Maria del Fiore was laid on September 8th, 1296. ​

Six years later, in 1302, Dante was sent into exile. The poet would never return to the city of his birth, dying in Ravenna on September 13/14th 1321.