This year marks the 750th anniversary of the birth of Dante Alighieri in May/June 1265
Among the many activities(87 in Italy and 173 internationally) held during the year to celebrate Dante’s birthday, Italian actor and comedian Roberto Benigni read from the XXIII Canto of The Divine Comedy's Paradiso in the Italian Senate. Benigni, who has hosted live summer readings of the Divine Comedy in Florence’s Piazza Santa Croce for the past few years, said, "The Divine Comedy is a miracle, a work whose beauty takes your breath away. It's not just the high point of Italian literature, but the high point of all literature – consider that, even if it’s more than 700 years old, it's still almost fully understood by everyone." –