Porta Palatina

Northern gate of Roman Augusta Taurinorum, with two sixteen-sided towers: Turin's best-preserved ancient monument.

Image from the publication of Italia.it – Ministero del Turismo — From the publication of Italia.it – Ministero del Turismo

Porta Palatina is the northern gate of the Roman colony of Augusta Taurinorum: the Porta Principalis Sinistra, which still gives access from the north to the Roman Quarter, on piazza Cesare Augusto, next to the Porta Palazzo district^[1]. It is a double gate, with a courtyard facing the city and two corner towers more than thirty metres high^[1]. Of the ancient city's four main gates only two survive, this one and the one embedded in Palazzo Madama^[2], and the Treccani encyclopedia lists it, together with the remains of the Porta Praetoria and the theatre, among the surviving traces of Roman Turin^[3].

The north gate of the Augustan colony

The colony of Augusta Taurinorum, in the territory of the Taurini, was founded between 25 and 15 BC, in the years when Augustus was carrying out the "pacification" of the Alps^[2]. The city occupied a rectangle of about 700 by 750 metres, some fifty hectares, with the north-eastern corner cut off diagonally^[2]. The four main gates opened at the ends of the two axes: the cardo maximus, traced today by via San Tommaso and via Porta Palatina, and the decumanus maximus, today via Garibaldi^[2]. Porta Palatina closed the cardo to the north.

In the entry "Torino" of the Enciclopedia Italiana (1937) the walls are described with one gate on each side: to the north Porta Palatina, "originally perhaps called Porta Romana" because from there the road to Rome left via Milan and Pavia; to the south the gate still called Porta Marmorea in the sixteenth century; to the east the so-called Porta Praetoria, whose remains lie beneath the entrance hall of Palazzo Madama; to the west the Porta Segusina, at the corner of via Garibaldi and via della Consolata^[4]. The eastern gate, today inside the building on piazza Castello, was formed by two sixteen-sided towers framing four archways, the two central ones for carts and the two side ones for pedestrians, and according to the Palazzo Madama museum it had dimensions and a shape similar to those of Porta Palatina^[5].

The dating varies according to the studies. The Enciclopedia Italiana speaks of a construction "of Augustan times"^[4]; MuseoTorino attributes the theatre's first structures with certainty to the age of Augustus and places the first works on the city walls in the following decades^[2], dating the gate to the 1st century, built together with the walls in the Augustan age or in the immediately following years, under the Flavians^[6]; the Palazzo Madama museum, for the twin gate, indicates the 1st century AD^[5]. The two sixteen-sided towers rest on a square base and flank a central body about twenty metres long^[6].

A palace in the shape of a gate

For the Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica (1966) the typology of Porta Palatina was repeated in two other gates of the city: in the "marmorea," destroyed in 1635 and known from a drawing by Giuliano da Sangallo, and in the gate whose remains are embedded in Palazzo Madama^[7]. The effect arises from the contrast between the parts. The towers start from a square plan and rise to become sixteen-sided polygons; the central body is marked by two superimposed rows of windows; everything is built in the same red brick, which according to Carlo Carducci forms "the dominant motif of this monument"^[7]. The walls that were attached to it were instead a rubble-core construction, lined on the inside with split river pebbles^[7].

"Porta Palatina in T. can be considered one of the finest examples of a city gate; in it the solidity of a defensive work is reconciled with the refined elegance of a palace façade."
Carlo Carducci, entry "Torino," Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica, 1966

The judgement comes from the same article^[7].

From the Lombards to the prisons

The war between Goths and Byzantines and the arrival of the Lombards, who took Turin around 570, closed the history of the Roman city^[2]. The gate, however, did not lose its importance: the court of the Lombard dukes stood precisely in the area between via Torquato Tasso, via IV Marzo and via Porta Palatina, and as late as 1102 a church of San Pietro de curte ducis is recorded there^[8]. According to a traditional explanation, the name "Palatina" comes precisely from the proximity to the palace of the Lombard rulers^[1]. Later the centre of power shifted south, away from what MuseoTorino calls the "heart of Roman and Lombard power"^[8].

In the 12th century the gate was known as Porta Doranea or Doranica^[6]. Outside it, as outside the Porta Segusina, suburbs grew up between the 15th and early 16th centuries, razed to the ground with the other outer boroughs after the French occupied the city in 1536^[8]. After the end of the empire the building had functioned as a fortress-palace on the road to Pavia and Milan; the left tower was rebuilt in the 15th century^[1]. In 1724 King Vittorio Amedeo II ceded the gate and the buildings that had been added to it to the municipality, which turned the complex into a prison^[6]. In the index of Giovanni Gaspare Craveri's Guida de' forestieri per la real città di Torino (1753), right after Porta Palazzo, appears the entry "Le Torri, o sia Carceri del Vicariato"^[9].

Isolation and restorations

In 1861 the municipality decided to isolate the monument, and the restorations entrusted to Carlo Promis lasted until 1873; in 1904 some works resumed under the direction of Alfredo D'Andrade, and in 1935 a new building site opened, destined to drag on for decades^[6]. The 20th-century restorations were carried out while cars still passed beneath the gate^[1]. In 1937 the Enciclopedia Italiana could write that, of so many ancient buildings, only the gate still stood in Turin, and that it had just received a new arrangement:

"Of the numerous ancient structures nothing remains standing but the towered Porta Palatina: an imposing brick construction of Augustan times, with no equal today in the whole Roman world, which has recently received a dignified arrangement."
Entry "Torino," Enciclopedia Italiana, 1937

The quotation is taken from the Treccani entry^[4]. The monument was later struck in the air raids of 13 July 1943^[6]. The statue of Julius Caesar in front of the towers is modern too: it has stood there for less than a century^[1].

Today

Next to the gate stretches a small archaeological park^[1]. The lawn at the foot of the towers has also become a canvas: in 2020 the artist Saype painted there, in eco-friendly paint on grass, Beyond Walls, 6,400 square metres of giant hands joined in a chain, a symbol of brotherhood; it was the seventh stage of a project that had already linked Europe and Africa, from Paris to Yamoussoukro^[10].

Pages linking here

Sources

Report a mistake.