Hell looks like a colossal vortex, consisting of concentric circles, the narrow end of which rests on the center of the earth. Having passed the threshold of hell, inhabited by the souls of insignificant, indecisive people, they enter the first circle of hell, the so-called limb (A., IV, 25-151), where the souls of the virtuous pagans who did not know the true God, but who approached this knowledge and for then delivered from hellish torments. Here Dante sees outstanding representatives of ancient culture - Aristotle, Euripides, Homer, etc.
The next circle is filled with the souls of people who once indulged in unbridled passion. Among those worn by the wild whirlwind, Dante sees Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo, who have fallen victim to the forbidden love for each other. As Dante, accompanied by Virgil, descends lower and lower, he becomes a witness to the torment of gluttons, forced to suffer from rain and hail, misers and profligates, tirelessly rolling huge stones, angry, bogged down in a swamp.
They are followed by heretics and heresiarchs engulfed in eternal flame (among them Emperor Frederick II, Pope Anastasius II), tyrants and murderers floating in streams of boiling blood, suicides turned into plants, blasphemers and rapists burned by a falling flame, deceivers of all kinds, torment which are very diverse.
Finally Dante enters the last, 9th circle of hell, intended for the most terrible criminals. Here is the abode of traitors and traitors, among them the greatest - Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius - they are gnawed with his three mouths by Lucifer, an angel who once rebelled against God, the king of evil, doomed to imprisonment in the center of the earth. The last song of the first part of the poem ends with the description of the terrible appearance of Lucifer.
In front of the entrance - pitiful souls who did not do either good or evil during their lifetime, including the "bad flock of angels" who were neither with the devil nor with God.
1st circle (Limb). Unbaptized babies and virtuous non-Christians.
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2nd circle. Voluptuous (fornicators and adulterers).
3rd circle. Gluttons, gluttons.
4th circle. Misers and profligates (love of overspending).
5th circle (Stygian swamp). Angry and lazy.
6th circle (city of Dit). Heretics and false teachers.
7th circle.
1st belt. Abusers over neighbor and over his property (tyrants and robbers).
2nd belt. Abusers over themselves (suicides) and over their property (players and motes, that is, senseless destroyers of their property).
3rd belt. Abusers of a deity (blasphemers), against nature (sodomites) and art (covetousness).
8th circle. Who deceived the distrustful. It consists of ten ditches (Zlopazuhi, or Evil Crevices), which are separated from each other by shafts (rolls). Towards the center, the area of the Evil Crevices slopes, so that each next ditch and each next rampart are located slightly lower than the previous ones, and the outer, concave slope of each ditch is higher than the inner, curved slope (Hell, XXIV, 37-40).
The first shaft adjoins the circular wall. In the center is the depth of a wide and dark well, at the bottom of which lies the last, ninth, circle of Hell. From the foot of the stone heights (v. 16), that is, from the circular wall, to this well go with radii, like the spokes of a wheel, stone ridges, crossing ditches and ramparts, and above the ditches they bend in the form of bridges, or arches. In the Evil Crevices, deceivers are punished who deceived people not associated with them by special bonds of trust.
