The Quarry and the Gate

The gate is the one from the third canto, inscription and all; the quarry around it belongs to the game, and the game says so: the poem does not say what stands near the gate, only that you arrive at it. A stone frame planted in the middle of a wood would be a gate with no wall; here the wall is a mountain opened in benches, with the vertical scars of the wedges, the spoil at its foot and blocks left half cut.

It is quarried and not built, because the inscription names who made it and they are not masons. Of the nine lines two are carved, the first and the last, without accents, the way letters were cut; and there are no doors, because «questa porta ... è sanza serrame» (Inf. VIII 125-126).

The same quarry stands behind the main menu, as a place and not as a backdrop: same stone, same fire, same darkness as the game, with one verse on screen, the last one. From the inside the gate carries no words: you see the back of the same quarry. Framed in game, it says this gate never shuts, and that the words on the lintel are its own, cut «di colore oscuro» (Inf. III 10).