The structure of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in Dante and the placement of souls by circle

Some Sample Schemes of the Layout of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise according to the Text of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy"

Hell: 9 circles. Purgatory: 6 circles and 3 circles of Ante-Purgatory. Paradise: 9 levels. In Hell there is pitch darkness, in Limbo, half-light. In Purgatory there are day and night. In Paradise, it is day.

Upper Hell and Lower Hell are separated by the iron wall of the city of Dis. In Upper Hell, circles 1-5 hold the souls of sinners punished for incontinence, gluttony, avarice, lust, wrath and prodigality. In Lower Hell, circles 6-9 hold those punished for evil committed knowingly: for violence, fraud and betrayal. The first circle of Hell is Limbo. In Limbo are Aristotle, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Plato, Democritus, and many philosophers, scholars and sages who lived before the coming of Christ.

In the 6th circle: heretics in fiery tombs. The 7th circle is separated from the 6th by a deep precipice. In the 7th circle, blasphemers and those who do violence to their neighbour and to themselves are dealt with: tyrants and murderers boil in scarlet water under the watch of centaurs, suicides have been turned into trees whose branches the harpies peck at, and blasphemers are devoured by the flames of a rain of fire. The 8th circle consists of 9 Malebolge (Evil Pouches). The 8th circle lies in a chasm, into which the river Phlegethon plunges; Dante descends into the 8th circle with Virgil on the back of Geryon, a dragon with a human face. Here are punished deceivers, panderers, seducers, swindlers, false prophets, thieves, hypocrites, counterfeiters, liars, flatterers and slanderers. The 9th circle is the very abyss of Hell. At the bottom the lake-marsh of Cocytus lies frozen. The giant Antaeus carries Dante and Virgil on his palm to the surface of the lake. Frozen into the ice are those who betrayed their kin, their fellow believers, their fatherland. At the centre of Hell, frozen in the ice, is the infernal sovereign with three mouths, in which Judas, Brutus and Cassius are tormented.

In Purgatory are the slothful, the proud, the envious, the wrathful, the gloomy, the avaricious, the prodigal, the gluttonous and the lustful.

In Heavenly Paradise: the Moon with the righteous, Mercury with the ambitious, Mars with the warriors for the faith, Venus with the souls of the loving, the Sun with the sages, Jupiter with the just, Saturn with the contemplatives, the Starry Heaven with the souls of the triumphant, and the Empyrean with God.