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The outer facade of the Popolo Porta.

41°54′41.63″N 12 ° 28′33.54 ″ and / 41,9115639, 12,4759833

The Porta del Popolo (in Spanish, Puerta del Pueblo ) It is a door of the Aurelian walls of Rome.

History and urbanism [ To edit ]

His original name was Flaminia door Because from here it came out, and today, the Flaminia road, which formerly began much further south, in the Porta Fontinalis, near the monument to Víctor Manuel II. In the 10th century it was called Valentine’s Day by La Basilica and homonymous catacumbas, located alitage del current Viale Pilsudski.

The origin of the name of the door and the homonymous square to which it opens is not clear: it was thought that it could derive from the numerous poplars ( poplar In Italian) that they covered the area, but it is more likely that the place name is related to the origins of the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, which was built in 1099 by Pope Pascual II with a more or less voluntary subscription of the Roman people.

Given the importance of the Flaminia road, since its early days it had the distribution role of incoming traffic in the city rather than a defensive use. This led to the assumption, however doubtful, that it was initially built with two arches (with the two lateral cylindrical towers) and that only in the medieval times, reduced the demands of the traffic because of the demographic collapse, it was reduced to a single bow. At the time of Pope Sixtus IV the door was sedated and victim of a secular abandonment, damaged by time and medieval sieges; The superficial restoration was limited to a shoring and partial reinforcement of the structure.

The door is today a meter and a half approximately above the old level. The waste transported by the river on its occasional floods and the slow but constant erosion of the chlor the remodeling made at the beginning of the 5th century by Emperor Honorio.

The current aspect is the result of a reconstruction of the 16th century, also necessary for the importance that at that time the door had acquired again from the point of view of urban traffic from the north. The outer facade was commissioned by Pope Pius IV to Miguel Ángel, who however transferred the commission to Nanni Di Baccio Bigio, who did the work between 1562 and 1565 inspired by the Arc de Tito. The four columns of the facade come from the ancient Basilica of San Pedro and framed the only great arch, crowned by the commemorative plaque of the restoration and by the papal shield sustained by two cornucopias; The original circular base towers were replaced by two large square guard towers and the entire structure was crowned by elegant battlements. In 1638, between the two couples of columns, the two statues of San Pedro and San Pablo, the work of Francesco Mochi, which had been rejected for the Basilica of San Pablo Extramuros were inserted.

Registration in the central plate, placed as a memory of the restoration of Pius IV, recites:

PIVS 4 PONT MAX
The gate of this extension
Tvdin to exit

Tired in the year 3

For its part, the inner facade was made by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Pope Alejandro VII and executed on the occasion of the arrival in Rome, on December 23, 1655, of the abdicataria Queen Cristina de Sweden, as the registration «Felici Favsto [QVE] Ingssvi Anno Dom [Ini] MDClv “(” For a happy and propitious entrance, year of the Lord of 1655 “), sculpted on the attic of the inner facade by the will of the Pope himself. Alejandro VII’s family shield was also placed (the six -piece mount crowned by the eight -pointed star, the Chigi emblem). The location of the registration, in addition to its brief text, is quite unique: it is on the interior facade of the door instead of, as it would seem more logical, on the outside, where it would have been visible by those who enter the city; It would be said, argues Cesare d’Onofrio, that the Pope would somehow would maintain the distances of the interference and the overflowing personality of the newly converted ex-sobran, with all the related diplomatic complications. The visit was anyway a memorable event for the people of Rome, both for the pomp and luxury, and by the disappointment caused to merchants and street vendors who were forced to suspend their activities for a few days to allow cleaning and maintaining decorum to throughout the entire parade of the Popolo Porta to San Pedro. [ first ] ​

Under the door, other spectacular parades had passed: the greatest was that of the French army of Carlos VIII, which on December 31, 1494 paraded for more than six hours providing a rare demonstration of military power, but also the parades of cardinals that, With the Pope in the lead, they were heading to the Consistory raising the enthusiastic and respectful admiration of the people of Rome.

To cope with the greatest demands of urban traffic, in 1887 the two lateral arches were opened, for whose realization it had been necessary, already in 1879, demolish the towers that flanked the door. On the occasion of these works (which cost 300,000 lires), particularly important remains for the historical reconstruction of the door, related to the old Aureliana era structure and the cylindrical towers. As a testimony of the works, two plates were placed on the outer facade, on the sides of Pío IV: the inscription of the left remembers the first intervention:

In the year 1879
RESTITVTAE FREEDOM 10
Tvrribvs vtrinqve deletis

Frons produvcta instalvrata

The other recalls the second intervention:

S P Q R
VrBe Italian claims
Inhabitants successfully avctis

Twins fornices founded

Near the door one of the Dayziar stones , placed in 175 about some important and discovered doors in different times: only two others have been found, next to the Salary Port and the Asinarian Port. They were placed to identify a kind of administrative limit, where the customs offices were. But if these offices were responsible for the collection of taxes on goods at the entrance and exit of the city, in medieval times they were also dedicated to the collection of toll for traffic through the doors, some of which were owned by some rich landowner . The first testimonies of this institution, which was in force at least until the beginning of the 15th century, [ 2 ] They date back to the 5th century. But it is from the ninth century (when the pontiffs, in full confrontation with the City Council of Rome, had administrative control over the Gabelas of almost all doors) a testimony according to which Pope Sergio II granted the Collection of the toll of the Porta Flaminia to the monastery of San Silvestro in capite.

See also [ To edit ]

References [ To edit ]

  1. ↑ The newspaper Giacinto Gigli writes: «On the 21st a side was published that the next day were kept closed all the stores, and nothing was sold …, and the streets were prepared through which the queen had to pass from the Porta del Porta Popolo to San Pedro, but then in the afternoon the party unleashed, and the streets shouted that the ride had postponed the next day ».
  2. ↑ For 1467-68, the price of traffic for the Popolo Porta was set in Fiorini 39, Bol. 3, den. 6. During the pint .

Bibliography [ To edit ]

  • Quercioli, Mauro (1982). The walls and doors of Rome (in Italian) . Roma: Newton Compton Ed.
  • Cozzi, Laura G. (1968). The doors of Rome (in Italian) . Rome: F. spinosis ed.
  • D’Onofrio, Cesare (1976). Rome is good for a town: Roman stories between Cristina di Sweden, Piazza del Popolo and the Academy of Arcadia (in Italian) . Rome: Palombi brothers.

external links [ To edit ]