Mura di Benevento

Benevento's walls record a history of defence and rebuilding. Raised in the mid-fourth century, rebuilt by Lombard dukes, breached by emperors and kings, expanded to eleven gates and stripped after Italian unification, parts of the circuit survive within the historic centre.

Why it matters

Literary sources record the defensive circuit when Totila destroyed it in 542 after taking the city. A defence is also described at the Byzantine siege of 663, when King Grimoald's forces resisted Emperor Constans II; tradition also credits Bishop Barbatus's prayers. Surviving structures include the Port'Arsa, towers embedded in later buildings and Trajan's Arch, incorporated into the northern curtain as the Porta Aurea.

What to notice

The earliest masonry dates to hurried mid-fourth-century construction, and later repairs often reused stone from classical public buildings. The Torre della Catena is a fifteenth-century bulwark with an underpass built over an eleventh-century tower after the earthquake of 1456; a rondella survives along Viale dei Rettori. Port'Arsa preserves the site of the medieval gate called Iscardi or Viscarda, later Portella delle Calcare after nearby lime kilns. Beside Trajan's Arch, the Lapidarium pavilion displays archaeological artefacts and material about the Lombard walls.

Context and history

The circuit grew with the city's fortunes. By 891 it was strong enough to let Benevento resist a Byzantine siege for more than three months, from 13 July to 18 October; in the second half of the tenth century the enceinte expanded to the edges of the Canali dei Mulini water channels. The earthquake of 25 October 989 brought fifteen towers down. War did what tremors spared: Frederick II's army broke through in 1241, again in 1250, and after Manfred's defeat the Angevin troops of 1266 tore down stretches in their turn. Alfonso of Aragon entered with relative ease in 1440, and only after the earthquake of 1456 did the walls receive their significant early-Renaissance reinforcements. A further restoration followed the damage of the 1557 siege conducted by the Duke of Alba for Philip II, and a final general consolidation came in the eighteenth century. Under Duke Arechi II the chronicler Leo of Ostia recorded at least five gates — Porta Aurea, Porta Somma, Porta Rufina, Porta San Lorenzo and Porta Iscardi — later joined by Porta Gloriosa, four thirteenth-century gates and the Porta Rettore: eleven openings by the end of the fourteenth century. After unification the gates were demolished almost entirely; the Porta Aurea, Port'Arsa and Porta Rufina survived the demolitions, and the Rufina fell in the Fascist era.