page_title: Virgil
section_title: Virgil's tomb
hierarchical_section_title: Virgil / Later views and reception / Virgil's tomb
caption_attribution_description: Sepolcro di Virgilio, Napoli
context_page_description: Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He wrote three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes attributed to him as well.
  Virgil is traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His Aeneid has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome since the time of its composition. Modeled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid follows the Trojan refugee Aeneas as he struggles to fulfill his destiny and reach Italy, where his descendants Romulus and Remus were to found the city of Rome. Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably Dante's Divine Comedy, in which Virgil appears as Dante's guide through Hell and Purgatory.
context_section_description: The structure known as "Virgil's tomb" is found at the entrance of an ancient Roman tunnel (aka "grotta vecchia") in Piedigrotta, a district 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) from the centre of Naples, near the Mergellina harbor, on the road heading north along the coast to Pozzuoli. While Virgil was already the object of literary admiration and veneration before his death, in the Middle Ages his name became associated with miraculous powers, and for a couple of centuries his tomb was the destination of pilgrimages and veneration.
caption: Tomb of Virgil in Naples, Italy
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