Porta Leoni Archeological Site Historical Timeline

Origins

The first gate here was built in the first century BC, in the republican period, of brick and local tuff. It stood on the cardo, the town's main north-south street, and its foundations are what the excavation shows.

Turning points

In the first century AD the gate was refaced in white limestone, in the same monumental manner as Porta Borsari -- Verona was rebuilding its public face, and its gates were the most visible part of it.

Influential people

The name is generally traced to a Roman funerary monument carved with lions found nearby, rather than to any medieval family.

Cultural evolution

As the city grew, buildings were raised against the gate and through it. What was not useful was demolished; what was structurally convenient was kept and built into. That is why half of it exists and half does not.

Present-day significance

Excavation in the twentieth century exposed the earlier phase below the modern street, and it was left open rather than backfilled -- so both gates, four hundred years apart, are visible at once.