Porta Leoni is one of the gates that opened along the Roman walls of Verona. Built in the 1st century BC. and restored in the following century, it connected the main point of the city with the Vicus Veronensium, or with a branch of the Via Claudia Augusta, which continued towards Hostilia.
The Porta Leoni were built at the same time as the Roman curtain
wall, as evidenced by the fact that the two structures are closely
connected in the foundations and the first rows of bricks, as well as in
the Porta Iovia: their construction took place around the second half of
the 1st century BC. AD, after the final Romanization of Gaul
Transpadanskaya, which took place in the spring of 49 BC. and the
subsequent relocation of the city of Verona to the bend of the Adige.
The building, which served as the entrance to the city by cardo maximus,
had a square plan with a central courtyard, a place for stopping and
observing travelers, and from the side of the countryside it was
enclosed between two high towers. Another proof of the simultaneity of
the construction of the city gates and city walls is the inscription
walled up above the median pylon of Porta Leoni: this inscription,
unanimously considered the foundation act of Roman Verona, shows the
names of quattorviri. who built the walls and gates of Verona.
In
the first half of the 1st century, the gate, which was built almost
entirely of brick, was included in the monumentalization work to which
the important Venetian city was subjected: as a result of the
intervention, the new stone facades on the avenue from the street side
were compared. Forum and countryside. This is an operation of pure
decoration of the façades, so much so that the additions remain
independent of the brick core of the gates and walls. These works also
belong to the civil quadruvirate, as evidenced by the inscription
engraved on the surviving arch with the name of one of the Roman
administrators.
The ancient name of the Roman gate is unknown,
but in the Middle Ages it was known first under the name Porta San
Fermo, due to its proximity to the church of the same name, and then
under the classical name of Arco di Valerio. , on behalf of the proposed
builder. Today it is known under the name of Porta Leoni, derived from
the street in which it is located, which was already called "Via de
Leoni" in the sixteenth century, because there is preserved the upper
part of a Roman funerary monument, surmounted on both sides by two
lions, probably to the burial, which went beyond the gate. The door,
which had already undergone several mutilations in the late Middle Ages
and was now partially built into a residential building, was a source of
inspiration and was reproduced several times by famous Renaissance
artists. such as Giovanni Caroto, Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio.
Thanks to numerous archaeological excavations and the study of the
preserved elevation, where two elevations of the republican and imperial
eras face each other, scientists have managed to reconstruct the image
of the ancient city gates.
The building, built almost entirely of
brick in the late Republican era, was a square structure measuring 16.70
m on each side with a central rectangular courtyard, double arches 330
cm wide and 525 cm high on the facades and galleries on the upper
floors. . At the corners of the building, from the agro side, there were
two high polygonal towers with sixteen sides, 7.40 meters in diameter.
At ground level, the defensive structure was interrupted only by arches
and, probably, by narrow passages for access to the towers, from which,
with the help of a system of wooden stairs, one could climb to the upper
floors. Thus, on the second and third levels there were two rows of
galleries, of which the lower one gave access to the battlemented
passage of the walls. The galleries and towers were illuminated by a
series of vaulted windows (160 cm high and 60 cm wide on the second
level and 180 cm high and 60 cm wide on the third), which created a
strict and uniform design on the outside. Instead, the façade
overlooking the city was more elaborate: on the top floor, the four
central windows were replaced by a large Doric loggia. The building
contained (about 13 meters high) a roof with a wooden frame.
The
city gates were characterized by strict string entablature and elements
of a predominantly Ionic order, although the Doric style appeared in the
frieze on the second level and in the loggia on the third. Points
subject to greater wear or stress and decorations were made from blocks
of local tuff, the trabeza on the third level was made from terracotta
and the rest of the masonry was made from brick.
During the
imperial era, this predominantly brick building was supported by two new
white stone facades from Valpantena, of which the one on the city side
still exists and overlaps the republican one, retreating a little more
than half a meter. This stone façade is a scheme on the lower floor,
which does not differ much from that of the Porta Borsari, which has
undergone a similar monumental intervention, being an arch framed in an
aedicule, composed of two half-columns with Corinthian capitals
supporting an entablature and a pediment. The intermediate level has a
rather simple construction, with windows framed by linear elements in
very low relief, while the upper level has a particularly slender
exedra, enclosed between thin twisted columns that emphasize the
vertical tension of the solution.
Registration
An inscription
walled up above the middle column of Porta Leoni was found during the
restoration work of the building in 1965: this inscription is of great
importance, as it is considered the birth certificate of Roman of
Verona. The inscription, which has in fact already been identified by
some of the Renaissance artists who reported the names of the
quattuorviri, is characterized by four important lines of text:
"P. VALERIUS P. [F.] / Q. CAECILIUS [Q. F.] / Q. SERVILIUS [F.] / P.
CORNELIUS [F.] / IIII VIR MURUM PORTA[S] / CLUACAS D. D. [FECERUNT] / P.
VALERIUS P. [F.] / Q. CAELILIUS Q. [F. PROBARUNT]."
In the
epigraph, we recognize the names of the municipal quarters responsible
for the opening of the monument, authorized to build the walls, gates,
towers and sewers of the city.