Daughter of Guido da Polenta, she married Gianciotto Malatesta. She become renowned all over the world thanks to the famous account of her love story that Dante Alighieri wrote in the fifth Canto of his Divine Comedy. And it was precisely in Polenta, says Giosué Carducci, that Francesca “temprava gli ardenti occhi al riso” (toughened her burning eyes with laughter).