Porta del Popolo

History

The previous name was Porta Flaminia, because the consular Via Flaminia passed, as it passes even now, through it (in ancient times, Via Flaminia started at the Porta Fontinalis, close to the current Vittoriano). In the 10th century the gate was named Porta San Valentino, due to the basilica and the catacomb with the same name, rising at the beginning of Viale Pilsudski.

Porta del Popolo is a gate of the Aurelian Walls in Rome (Italy). The current Porta del Popolo was built by Pope Sixtus IV for the Jubilee Year 1475 on the site of an ancient Roman gate which, at that time, was partially buried.

The origin of the present name of the gate, as well as of the piazza that it overlooks, is not clear: it has been supposed that it could derive from the many poplars (Latin: populus) covering the area, but it is more likely that the toponym is connected with the origins of the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo (Saint Mary of the People), erected in 1099 by Pope Paschal II thanks to a more or less voluntary subscription of the Roman people.

Considering the importance of the Via Flaminia, Porta del Popolo had, since the beginning of its existence, a prevalent role of sorting of the urban traffic rather than a defensive use. This brought to a never confirmed conjecture that the gate was formerly built with two archways (as well as two cylindrical side towers) and that only during the Middle Ages, as a consequence of the decrease of traffic due to the demographic fall, it was reduced into a single archway. At the age of Sixtus IV, the gate was half-buried and victim of a centuries-old negligence, damaged by time and medieval sieges; a shallow restoration was limited to a partial reinforcement of the structure.

The gate rises still today about a metre and half above the ancient ground level. The debris carried by the river during its desultory floods and the slow but continuous flaking of the Pincian Hill had lifted the surrounding ground, so that the elevation of the whole gate could no longer be procrastinated. This need had already been felt during the restoration carried out in the 5th century by emperor Honorius, but the intervention was not carried out. …