The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri - mysticism or reality? Is it possible to determine from its text the time and place of action, to identify its characters with real people, to determine who is hiding under the names of Dante, Beatrice, Virgil? A careful and meticulous literary and historical analysis of the text shows that this is actually possible. The poet himself, wanting his immortal work to be read, left a huge number of indications about this. The first volume is devoted to deciphering the first part of Dante's Inferno.