Florence demanded Dante's bones for 200 years; friars took them out of the tomb, and a worker found them in 1865

Florence exiled Dante, and he died in Ravenna in 1321. He was buried in a Roman sarcophagus outside the Franciscan cloister. From the late 1400s Florence repeatedly asked for his remains, backed by two Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII. In 1519 Leo X authorised Florence to move the sarcophagus. A Florentine delegation opened it and found it empty. The Franciscans had secretly removed the bones. In 1677 the prior Antonio Santi put them in a new box. In 1781 they were returned to the sarcophagus when the current monument was finished. In 1810 friars hid them again during the French occupation. Florence built a cenotaph in Santa Croce in 1829. On 27 May 1865 a restoration worker found the box in a wall^†; a student, Anastasio Matteucci, saved it from a common grave. The bones were displayed briefly and reburied under the monument. From March 1944 to 19 December 1945 they were buried in the garden to protect them from bombing. They remain in Ravenna in 2026.