In Inferno Canto V, Francesca da Rimini’s lover is Paolo Malatesta. Dante encounters the pair among the lustful, swept endlessly through a violent storm as punishment for allowing passion to rule their lives.
Francesca tells Dante that she and Paolo were reading together about Lancelot and Guinevere when their reading turned into a kiss. Their affair was discovered by Paolo’s brother, Gianciotto Malatesta, who was Francesca’s husband. Gianciotto killed both lovers, and Dante’s episode transforms the historical scandal into one of the poem’s most memorable scenes.
Paolo’s first name is sometimes overlooked because he is commonly referred to as Paolo Malatesta or simply Paolo. The canto’s famous lines about love, including “Love led us to one death,” emphasize Francesca’s interpretation of their fate. The couple are not the same as Ugolino and his children, while Guido da Montefeltro belongs to a different episode later in Inferno.