The nine Circles of Hell, punishing progressively more serious sins, gives the sinners what they ultimately desire, but not the way they expected. Start here to learn what Dante experiences in Hell and how the punishments fit the sin.
Gate of Hell – Cowards who refused to take a stand for or against God. Running aimlessly, stung by wasps.
Circle one – Limbo. Virtuous pagans. Virgil, Plato. Unfulfilled desire, hopelessness and grief.
Circle two – The lustful. Francesca and Paolo. Cleopatra. Eternally being swirled in windstorm.
Circle three – The gluttons. Guarded by the three-headed dog, Cerberus. Eating slime and muck.
Circle four – The prodigal and the miserly. Hoarders and wasters pushing enormous stones against each other.
Circle five – The wrathful and the sullen. Thrashing flesh and bodies torn apart in dark filthy water of the River Styx.
Circle six – The heretics. City of Dis. Sinners living in fiery tombs.
Circle seven – The violent, the suicides, the blasphemers, the sodomites, the usurers. A river of boiling blood guarded by Centaurs. Souls become a forest of suffering trees, others torn apart by dogs, rain of fire, mutilation.
Circle eight – Fraudulent, pimps, seducers, flatterers, simonists, sorcerers, corrupt politicians, sewers of division, falsifiers, alchemists, thieves. Eternally walking and tormented. Living in excrement. Stuffed into holes. Heads turned backwards. Boiling tar. lead capes. Snakes. Flames.
Circle nine – Betrayers of family, country, and God. Sinners encased in ice. Home of Satan. Cannibalism. Judas being eternally chewed by Lucifer.
