Porta Udine

Every walled town of medieval Friuli had its gates; Gemona keeps one. Porta Udine, of old called the Door of Doors, is the only survivor of three successive circles of walls, and it still stands where the road from Udine used to enter the town — a single arch of grey sandstone that condenses some eighteen centuries of urban history.

Why it matters

A city gate is a rare thing to survive, because walls fall to cannon, to plague-panics and above all to property developers. Gemona's official itinerary dates the first circuit of walls to late antiquity, around 166–168 AD, and records that when a second circuit went up around 1260 the old walls were demolished — every gate except this one, which retained the name Porte delle Porte. A third circuit followed between 1370 and 1396, almost two kilometres around with seven towers and seven gates, and its gates in turn vanished as the town outgrew them; Porta Udine alone continued to function. The surviving gate is a rare continuous link between the historic town and its former countryside approaches.

What to notice

The gate's facing is built of squared grey sandstone blocks, set against the restored plaster of the church of San Michele and the former hospital. Above the round arch, three inserted decorations align vertically: a bas-relief of Saint Mark, the lion of the Venetian Republic; the coat of arms of the Magnifica Comunità di Gemona; and a monogram beneath a cross. Documents from the fourteenth century assign the gate to the first and second circuits, and record its rebuilding in 1449. An inscription beneath the lion names communal administrator Girolamo Locatelli and dates the lion to 1550; a date of 19 May 1683 on the left jamb may mark a later restoration.

Context and history

Gemona's defences grew in rings. The innermost, assigned by the town's official narrative to the late Roman empire, protected a settlement that would later pass under the Patriarchs of Aquileia and the Republic of Venice. Around 1260 the town expanded and a second circuit replaced the first, sparing the old gate because a gate in working order is worth more than its stone. The third wall of 1370–1396 pushed the perimeter outwards again; its seven towers and seven gates defined the Renaissance town, and its disappearance over later centuries left Porta Udine as the sole witness of how a walled Gemona was entered.

The rebuild of 1449 falls within the early Venetian period. The evangelist's lion on the facade asserted Venetian sovereignty at the town entrance. That the community then added its own arms beneath the lion's is a neat statement of the local compact — Venice above, the Magnifica Comunità below, faith beneath both — all compressed into a single archway of grey stone.