Books by level / Italian books
La Divina Commedia: reading level, length and free edition
La Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri is an epic poem in Italian. Our team rates it C2. It runs to 97,718 words with 12,889 different word forms, about 8–16 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Project Gutenberg.
- Author
- Dante Alighieri
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- C2
- Form
- epic poem
- Words
- 97,718
- Different word forms
- 12,889
- Forms for 95% / 98%
- 8,004 / 10,935
- Reading time
- 8–16 h
- Free edition
- Project Gutenberg
L’opera suprema della letteratura italiana: il viaggio di Dante tra Inferno, Purgatorio e Paradiso.
Is La Divina Commedia right for your level?
To recognise 95% of the running words in La Divina Commedia, you need its 8,004 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 10,935.
A word form is any spelling that appears in the text, so “walk” and “walked” count twice, and names count too. These numbers are a guide to how much vocabulary the book asks for, not a test. The level itself was set by hand by our team. Before you commit, read one page of the free edition and count the words you do not know: the one-page test takes two minutes.
Which words should you know before you start?
These are the words that La Divina Commedia uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 20 Italian books in our library; the number is how many times each appears. Names of people and places are left out. Learning a handful of them first makes the opening chapters easier.
- rispuose 69
- quell 54
- quand 54
- diss 51
- etterno 47
- perch 47
- aere 46
- suso 43
- retro 41
- quant 37
- infino 36
- giuso 34
- divina 32
- quest 32
- volsi 29
How does it begin?
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.
From the Project Gutenberg edition, which is in the public domain. If this paragraph already feels slow, try a book one level lower.
How long does it take to read?
| Words | 100 wpm | 150 wpm | 200 wpm | 250 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 97,718 | 16 h | 11 h | 8 h | 6.5 h |
Learners reading a book at their level often manage 100 to 150 words per minute, and readers in their first language 200 to 250. Where these speeds come from, and a calculator for your own: How long does it take to read a book?
Where can you read it for free?
The free edition is Project Gutenberg eBook #1000. Project Gutenberg publishes books that are in the public domain in the United States, as EPUB, Kindle and plain text, free and without an account. Copyright terms differ by country: if you live outside the United States, check that the book is out of copyright where you are before you download it.
To read it with a translation over every word you tap, open it in Readlang Mobile on iPhone or iPad.
What to read next at C2
Italian books at the same level that ask for a similar amount of vocabulary:
- Orlando Furioso, Ludovico Ariosto: 266,145 words, 7,913 forms for 95%
See also all Italian books by level and books at C2 in all five languages.