How many cantos are in the Purgatorio?

The Purgatorio contains 33 cantos. It is the middle cantica of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, positioned between the 34-canto Inferno and the 33-canto Paradiso.

In Purgatorio, Dante and the Roman poet Virgil climb a mountain that represents the soul's movement from sin toward spiritual renewal. The mountain has an ante-purgatory, seven terraces associated with the seven deadly sins, and the earthly paradise at its summit. Each canto advances both the physical climb and Dante's moral education.

The poem's structure is highly deliberate. The Divine Comedy contains 100 cantos in total: 34 in Inferno and 33 each in Purgatorio and Paradiso. The extra canto in Inferno functions as an introductory canto for the whole poem, giving the three sections a balanced 33-canto pattern after that opening.

Readers sometimes confuse the number of cantos with the seven terraces or with the three major sections of the poem. Those numbers describe different layers of Dante's design; the correct count for Purgatorio itself is 33.