Florence's 'Grandpa Dante' is Marco, a Uffizi street performer portraying Dante for 26 years. His photos made him a viral Chinese sensation and cultural bridge.
Tags:For years, tourists visiting Florence have stopped outside the Uffizi Gallery to take photos with a mysterious man in a crimson robe. Holding an ancient book, his face frozen in a solemn expression, he looks like a statue brought straight out of medieval Italy. But drop a coin into his box, and he comes alive.
His name is Marco, a street performer who has spent 26 years portraying Dante Alighieri, Italy’s legendary poet. But online, he is better known by a much warmer name: “Grandpa Dante.”
And now, this Florentine street performer has become an unexpected sensation in China.
The story began with Chinese tourists doing what millions of travelers do every day: checking in at famous landmarks and sharing their photos online.
For many visitors to Florence, taking a picture with Grandpa Dante became a memorable part of the trip. Over time, Xiaohongshu, China’s popular lifestyle-sharing platform, filled with photos and videos of the crimson-robed performer. Some users even dug up pictures taken years earlier, discovering that Marco had been standing in almost exactly the same spot since at least 2006.
The discovery touched a nerve. In a world where trends change overnight, here was a man who had quietly dedicated decades to the same character, watching generations of tourists come and go.
Soon, Grandpa Dante was no longer just a photo opportunity for Chinese travelers. He was an internet celebrity.
小红书: Leslian（许愿跨年版
What makes the story even more fascinating is how Marco’s popularity has moved beyond tourism. Chinese internet users became curious about the person behind the costume, and Marco responded by opening his own social media account.
Through machine translation, he began sharing philosophical reflections about love, loneliness, identity, and finding peace in a noisy world. His words struck a chord with young Chinese readers navigating the pressures of modern life.
His growing audience includes not only literature lovers but also anime fans and young travelers who bring their favorite character merchandise for photographs. Marco welcomes them all with the same warmth, without judging what they love.
For someone portraying a poet who lived in the 13th century, Marco has found a surprisingly modern audience. Dante’s themes of exile, longing, and the search for meaning still resonate—this time through short videos, social media posts, and comment sections thousands of kilometers from Florence.
There is an irony at the heart of Grandpa Dante’s story. The real Dante was exiled from Florence in 1302 and spent the rest of his life away from the city he called home. Marco, meanwhile, has remained rooted in Florence for more than two decades, yet his image has traveled across the world.
小红书: 陳汁拿铁
He may never have needed a plane ticket to reach China. His audience brought him there, photograph, one post, and one shared memory at a time.
And perhaps that is the most interesting part of this unexpected internet phenomenon: Chinese tourists went to Florence to take pictures with Grandpa Dante, but they ended up bringing a piece of Florence back to China—and turning a local street performer into a cultural bridge between two worlds.
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