Dante VR: the first canto of the Divine Comedy recreated in virtual reality to experience the poet's journey firsthand

In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself... in virtual reality!

Italian start-up Beyond the Gate and Collegio San Carlo of Milan, with the sponsorship of the Dante Alighieri Society, have collaborated to create DANTE VR | La Porta dell’Inferno, an immersive experience that takes users to relive the first canto of L’Inferno taken from The Divine Comedy.

Made over a period of six months, the virtual reality experience lasts 15 minutes, during which we take on the role of Dante Alighieri to traverse the dark forest, get lost in the dark and face beasts until we arrive at the gates ofHell, where Virgil awaits us as he decants some verses from TheAeneid. All this for the educational purpose of making the public better acquainted with the famous work of the Supreme Poet.

“This project,” says Marco Arena, CEO and co-founder of Beyond the Gate, “is an example of how collaboration and exchange between seemingly different realities, such as a start-up and a centuries-old educational institution of recognized excellence, can come to generate innovation from tradition. Dante VR is a virtual reality product designed to bring new generations closer to the study of the Divine Comedy, through the contemporary language of the video game and with great attention to historical content. I thank Collegio San Carlo for taking an innovative look and experimenting with a new media such as the video game.”

The launch of the project comes in the context of the inauguration of the new DAMA(Digital Arts Music Agora) multipurpose spaces within the Collegio San Carlo, which consist of four new rooms dedicated to enhancing educational offerings, expressive arts and digitization, with the creation of laboratories for robotics and digital languages, a music room, an art atelier and a multipurpose room. A new area of no less than 700 square meters recovered in the ancient foundations of the seventeenth-century Busca Arconati Palace, the College’s first historical headquarters since 1869, following a major architectural redevelopment project. The new spaces are born in line with the vocation for experimentation that the Institute has always pursued.

“Dante VR and the broader DAMA project that has just been inaugurated,” said Rector Alberto Torriani, “are part of a vision of progressive transformation of teaching, which has seen the College take the lead in some of the most significant innovations of recent years. We seek to provide answers to the most important contemporary educational challenges: equipping students with innovative tools through which to interpret and anticipate the future.”

Dante VR: the first canto of the Divine Comedy recreated in virtual reality to experience the poet's journey firsthand

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