In Dante’s Inferno, at which boundary does Medusa appear as a threat to Dante?

In Dante’s Inferno, Medusa appears as a threat at the boundary of the City of Dis. Dante and Virgil encounter the fortified city during their descent through Hell.

The Furies call for Medusa to appear and turn Dante to stone. Virgil protects Dante by covering his eyes, preventing him from looking directly at her. The episode reworks the ancient myth of the petrifying Gorgon gaze into a symbolic danger within Dante’s Christian vision of the afterlife.

The City of Dis marks a major transition in the poem. Beyond its walls, Dante enters the lower regions of Hell, where the punishments concern more deliberate and serious forms of wrongdoing. Readers sometimes place Medusa in one of Hell’s numbered circles, but her appearance occurs at the guarded entrance to the City of Dis rather than as the punishment of a particular circle.