The Nine Circles of Hell Quiz
Fourteen questions on the architecture of Dante's Hell — which circle takes which sin, what sits outside the count, and what is at the very bottom. Every answer is anchored to the canto that states it.
Dante's Hell is a funnel of nine concentric circles, narrowing as the sins get worse. The ordering is not arbitrary and it is not a list of the seven deadly sins — Virgil lays the whole plan out in Canto XI, and it turns on a distinction between sins of appetite, sins of violence, and sins of fraud.
If you want the map rather than the test, the overview page walks all nine circles in order. Otherwise, start.
or just read the answers below
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Question 1 of 14
Which circle is Limbo?
Answer: The first
The first circle, immediately past the Acheron. It holds the unbaptised and the virtuous pagans, including Virgil — no torment, only longing without hope.
Inferno IV
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Question 2 of 14
Which circle punishes lust?
Answer: The second
The second, where an endless storm — "la bufera infernal, che mai non resta" — drives the souls who let desire drive them. Minos sits at its entrance judging arrivals for the whole of Hell.
Inferno V
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Question 3 of 14
Which circle punishes gluttony?
Answer: The third
The third, under a cold filthy rain Dante calls "etterna, maladetta, fredda e greve," with Cerberus standing over it.
Inferno VI
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Question 4 of 14
The fourth circle holds two opposite groups in one place. Which?
Answer: Hoarders and squanderers
Avarice and prodigality are treated as one sin seen from two ends, so the misers and the spendthrifts shove the same weights at each other forever. The wrathful and the sullen are the fifth circle — the other paired-opposites answer, and the usual wrong one.
Inferno VII.1–66
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Question 5 of 14
What is the fifth circle, and what river runs through it?
Answer: Wrath and sullenness, in the marsh of the Styx
The wrathful tear at each other on the surface of the Styx while the sullen lie gurgling a hymn under the mud: "Quest'inno si gorgoglian ne la strozza." Phlegyas ferries this water, not Charon.
Inferno VII.97–130
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Question 6 of 14
The sixth circle sits inside the iron walls of a city. What is the city, and who is punished there?
Answer: Dis, where the heretics lie in burning tombs
The city of Dis, whose gate the devils try to hold shut in Canto IX. Inside, the heresiarchs lie in open sepulchres under fire — Farinata and Cavalcante among them in Canto X.
Inferno IX–X
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Question 7 of 14
The seventh circle is divided into three rings. Violence against whom?
Answer: Against one's neighbour, against oneself, and against God
Virgil calls them "tre cerchietti" — three little circles — and divides violence by its object: others, self, and God. The third ring is where blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers are put together, on the reasoning that each assaults God directly, in his person, in nature, or in nature's art.
Inferno XI.17–51
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Question 8 of 14
What is Malebolge?
Answer: The eighth circle: ten concentric stone ditches of fraud
"Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge" — evil pouches. Ten ditches, each with its own species of fraud, crossed by stone bridges. It occupies Cantos XVIII to XXX, the longest single stretch of the Inferno.
Inferno XVIII.1
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Question 9 of 14
The ninth circle is not fire but ice. What is frozen in it?
Answer: The lake of Cocytus, holding the traitors
Cocytus, frozen by the wind off Satan's wings: "quindi Cocito tutto s'aggelava." Dante's lowest Hell is cold, not hot — the furthest point from the warmth of love is ice.
Inferno XXXII–XXXIV
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Question 10 of 14
Which zone of the ninth circle takes those who betrayed their own kin?
Answer: Caina
Caina, named for Cain, and the one Francesca threatens her husband with back in Canto V — "Caina attende chi a vita ci spense." The other three are the real zones for betrayers of country, of guests, and of lords.
Inferno XXXII.58
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Question 11 of 14
Where do the souls who lived without blame and without praise end up?
Answer: In no circle at all — the vestibule, before the Acheron
They run after a blank banner in the ante-chamber of Hell, rejected by Heaven and by Hell both. This is why "the nine circles" is not a complete census of Dante's Hell: the indifferent, and the gate-crowd, are outside the count.
Inferno III.31–69
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Question 12 of 14
Which canto stops the action so Virgil can explain the whole plan of Hell?
Answer: Canto XI
Canto XI, while the travellers wait out the stench on the edge of the seventh circle. It is the poem's own architectural drawing, and it is where the division into incontinence, violence, and fraud is actually stated.
Inferno XI
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Question 13 of 14
Usury lands in which circle?
Answer: The seventh, as violence against God
This is the question that catches almost everyone. Dante treats lending at interest as an offence against nature and against art — the two ways humankind is meant to make a living — and therefore against God, so the usurers sit in the third ring of the seventh circle, not with the misers.
Inferno XI.95–111
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Question 14 of 14
What is at the very bottom, and what is it doing?
Answer: Satan, frozen waist-deep, chewing Judas, Brutus, and Cassius in three mouths
Three faces on one head, six wings beating the wind that freezes the lake, and a traitor in each mouth: Judas head-first in the middle, Brutus and Cassius in the side mouths. Dante's Satan does not rule Hell — he is its deepest prisoner, and he cannot speak.
Inferno XXXIV.28–67
Read these cantos line by line
Every answer above links to the passage it comes from. The whole sequence, in order, is in the Inferno archive — the Italian text, tercet by tercet, with notes on what the translations do and do not catch.