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Palatine Gate

The Palatine Gate (Porta Palatina -  Porte Palatine) was the Porta Principalis dextera which allowed access from the north to the Augusta Taurinorum, or the Roman civitas today known as Turin.

It represents the main archaeological evidence of the Roman era of the city, as well as one of the city gates of the 1st century BC. best preserved in the world.

In 1860, with the construction of the Le Nuove prisons commissioned by Vittorio Emanuele II, the dilapidated Porta Palatina underwent further restoration.

In the early years of the twentieth century, at the same time as the rediscovery of the nearby theater, the architect Alfredo D'Andrade carried out a radical restoration, aiming at a careful cancellation of the previous interventions and freeing the structure of all the trappings added over the centuries and to the structure in masonry leaning against it.

Restored to its current appearance, the Porta Palatina was again the subject of restoration from 1934 to 1938, on the initiative of the fascist government.

All the archways were therefore opened and the structure was isolated from the surrounding urban context, demolishing a group of old houses too close to the monument.

However, some of these interventions were considered erroneous by archaeologists, since the door was originally close to the surrounding town but, above all, the incorrect positioning of the pair of bronze statues was contested.

In fact, they are erroneously placed in the internal area originally occupied by the statio and not in the external one, where they would have found a more credible location.

In 1961, on the occasion of the celebrations of the centenary of the unification of Italy, a new lighting of the Palatine Gate was created based on a project by Guido Chiarelli.

Until the seventies of the twentieth century the via Porta Palatina was passable by car traffic, allowing transit under the arches, but the new urban reorganization of the eighties made the area entirely pedestrian while preserving its integrity.

Together with the ancient theater, located a short distance away, it is included in the area of the Archaeological Park inaugurated in 2006.

A rare photograph that portrays the Porta Palatina in the late nineteenth century, before the restoration of D'Andrade.

Map: Palatine Gate