Museo delle Mura

The Museum of the Walls is housed in Porta San Sebastiano, one of the largest and best-preserved gates in Rome's Aurelian Walls. Its displays explain the development of the city's fortifications, while the gate itself preserves evidence of successive building phases and later reuse.

Why it matters

The museum presents Rome's defensive architecture through models, archaeological fragments and the fabric of Porta San Sebastiano. The exhibits trace the city's walls from early circuits to the Aurelian system and later medieval changes, connecting military engineering with the changing shape of Rome.

What to notice

The galleries include a travertine mosaic of two deer and a tiger, made during the gate's twentieth-century use as a residence. Models reconstruct early defensive circuits and the Aurelian Walls. In the gate, a Greek inscription on a keystone refers to Saints Conone and George, while a graffito of the Archangel Michael is associated with the fighting of 1327.

Context and history

The gate was originally known as Porta Appia, after the road it guarded. Its ancient structure was altered in several phases, including a major rebuilding under Honorius in the early fifth century. In 1536 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger adapted it for the entry of Charles V; it was decorated again in 1571 for Marcantonio Colonna's return from Lepanto. The building later served as the residence and studio of Ettore Muti. The city established the Museum of the Walls in stages from 1971, and the present didactic layout was inaugurated in 1990.