What we see in the nine rooms, for a total of 375 square meters, which will welcome visitors, is an updated Dante, not only celebrated. Numerous precious, ancient and contemporary objects are further enhanced by the presence of over 400 images and 250 texts.

In the Hall of Time the chronology of Dante's life and era is outlined and made visible; in the Hall of the face the iconography of the most recognizable of the poets in history is reconstructed and compared in the round; the Montevideo Hall retraces the celebrations and the importance that the figure of the Florentine exile has for Italian migrants and the use of his name in the representation that is still perpetrated in the world; the two halls of worship, where the relics and relics linked to the rediscovery of the remains of Dante's body at the end of the 19th century are exhibited; the Hall of fame in which animations and artistic interventions illustrate the pop and commercial dimension of a figure from the Middle Ages; the three rooms of the Divine Comedy are real experiential spaces, to live and also interact with the places of Dante's masterpiece, thanks to the setting conceived and created by the ON Architects studio.

The Museum presents the opportunity to delve into Dante's imagination with the strength of sensory experience and to appreciate the objects in the collection that from 11 September 1921 – when the Museum, then the Dante Museum, was inaugurated on the occasion of the celebrations of the sixth centenary Dante's death – testify to a story that binds characters and literary masterpieces to itself. The museum was conceived by the architect Ambrogio Annoni (then Superintendent of Ravenna) and by Corrado Ricci, a cultured Dante scholar and founder of the Ravenna Superintendence.

Preliminary to the rethinking of the existing Dante Museum was the design of a management system that would systematize the different skills and vocations connected to the place. The building is in fact owned by the Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna Foundation and the Library and the Dante Center of the Franciscan Friars Minor are located inside.

With the agreement governing the rearrangement and definition of the management model of the new museum, the institutional sharing between the ownership of the prestigious monumental complex, the Dante Center and the Municipality of Ravenna was sanctioned. The historical management divided by competence has been overcome through an exhibition that, inspired by modern museum techniques, restores the plurality and universality of Dante's work and at the same time the profound relationship between the city and its poet.

Wide area project

The Dante Museum is part of a new interpretation of the Dante area, which with the tomb, the future Casa Dante and other interventions is configured as the central part of an overall operation of enhancement and innovation in the context of the celebrations of the seventh centenary, designed in agreement with the Region, the MiC, the other Dante cities and the many national and international cultural institutions that promote study, research and dissemination activities.