The hell

The conception of the hell was formed with the development of people's ideas about the other world. First people believed that all dead people got into the same place, but later they started to divide the good people from sinners as well as the other world they get to. And with the lapse of time the other world was divided into the hell and Paradise. First the tradition of such division appeared in Greek mythology and later passed to Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
So, the hell is the part of the other world where sinners got after their death for the further punishment. The hell was the opposition to paradise.
In the Divine Comedy Dante describes the hell in nine circles and the lower the circle is, more serious the sings are. At the entrance there are miserable souls that did neither good nor bad things as well as the number of angels that serve neither to God nor to devil.
In Cabbala the ideas of the hell were based on the consciousness of the person. When the person realises he/she completely different from the god, they realise their evil essence and feel the shame. And the feeling of shame is the worst feeling that turns the person into ashes and damages him/her.
In Judaism the hell is the place for living of creatures that are evil and practice hater. There are eight circles of hell. Every level has the hot hell in the centre and the cold one around it. But there are also additional hells. The presence in the hell is long but not eternal. After the negative karma is cured, the creature dies and is born again in more developed worlds.