Porta Borsari Site Features

What survives is the inner face of the gate, in white Verona limestone, and it is more elaborate than a defensive structure needs to be -- this was a piece of civic display.

At ground level are two arched openings, the twin carriageways, framed by engaged columns.

Above them rise two storeys of aedicules: rows of small arched windows set between fluted columns with capitals, each pair topped by a pediment. The rhythm is what makes the gate: a defensive wall treated as a facade.

The inscription runs in large letters across the entablature above the arches.

Behind this face the gate originally had a courtyard flanked by towers -- the standard Roman arrangement, trapping attackers between two sets of doors. None of that survives; the street simply carries on.

The Gallienus inscription

Cut across the front, recording the 265 AD wall rebuild and the 259 days it took.

The two carriageways

Twin arches at street level, framed by columns -- and still, in effect, doing their job as the way into the old town.

The aedicule storeys

Two tiers of small arched windows between fluted columns, the reason the gate reads as architecture rather than fortification.

The street itself

Corso Porta Borsari follows the Roman decumanus, so walking through the gate puts you on a two-thousand-year-old alignment.