Gustave Doré, 1861 (public domain)
Free Italian reading, level C2
Read Dante's Inferno in the original medieval Italian
The most quoted opening tercet in Italian literature, and one of the hardest texts on this site to read unassisted.
Learn Italian with this book for freeDante's Inferno is genuinely one of the hardest texts on this site: medieval Tuscan verse that trips up native Italian speakers, not just learners. Lira keeps the original text exactly as Dante wrote it, but every unfamiliar word is one tap away from a translation, and every word you look up gets scheduled for review so the vocabulary actually stays with you.
Key vocabulary from La Divina Commedia — Inferno
A preview of the words you'll run into early on, with pronunciation. Every one of them, and every other word you tap while reading, gets saved to your review deck automatically.
la selva
forest, wood
smarrire
to lose, mislay
ritrovarsi
to find oneself
diritto
straight, direct
oscuro
dark, obscure
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
What actually happens while you read
One tap to translate
Click any unfamiliar word for its contextual translation, right inside the page. No dictionary tab, no losing your place in the story.
Every word saved with its sentence
The word you looked up keeps the exact sentence you found it in, not an isolated flashcard, so the meaning stays anchored to real context.
FSRS brings it back before you forget
Spaced repetition schedules each word's next review right before you'd naturally lose it, so vocabulary from this book actually stays with you.
Nel mezzo del di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva , ché la diritta via era .
TRANSLATION
dark
CONTEXT
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Start reading free →The science
Recognizing a word isn't the same as remembering it
According to Stephen Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis, a language is acquired durably through exposure to content you mostly already understand, not through isolated word lists. Reading a real book supplies exactly that kind of exposure. Spaced repetition on top of it is what turns a word you translated once into one you actually remember weeks later.
Learning approach
Retention with Lira
Start learning Italian with La Divina Commedia — Inferno today
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