Porta di Santa Maria del Mercato

On Corinaldo's eastern curtain, the Gate of Santa Maria del Mercato is a defensive complex rather than a single arch: a 1340 pointed opening, inscribed with its builders' record, guarding the foot of the Piaggia staircase. It forms part of the town's historic system of walls and towers.

Why it matters

Corinaldo is ringed by one of the most complete enceintes in the Marche, a perimeter of roughly 912 metres that still runs unbroken around the hilltop core. The Gate of Santa Maria del Mercato is its most eloquent single piece, because it shows two building campaigns joined to one another: a medieval opening of about 1340 and the later structures that grew against it. Rather than a hole in the wall, it is a small fortress in itself, with masonry that incorporates the remains of a drawbridge and a polygonal tower. The walls descend here towards the staircase that climbs into the old town past the Pozzo della Polenta.

What to notice

Two inscriptions are cut into the impost blocks at the springing of the arch: one records the year of construction, MCCCXL — 1340 — and the other preserves the medieval dedication of the passage, "ad portas Sancte Marie", at the gates of Saint Mary. The opening itself is ogival, a pointed fourteenth-century arch rather than a rounded Romanesque one, and it is the oldest element of the complex. Everything around it belongs to a second phase: the flanking defences were raised later, in a different epoch of the town's military history. The monumental staircase of Via Piaggia and the terraces of the access gates form part of the surrounding defensive landscape.

Context and history

The gate belongs to the eastern curtain of Corinaldo's walls, the section that faces the countryside below the town. Written sources on the circuit describe a calamity in the fourteenth century: in 1360 the town was razed by the papal army of Innocent VI under Galeotto I Malatesta, and reconstruction was granted by Urban V from 1366–67 onwards, with the defences rebuilt in brick crowned by swallowtail merlons. The 1340 date inscribed on the arch shows that this passage predates even that rebuilding, a survivor from the first phase of enclosure. A late fifteenth-century addition, carried out between 1484 and 1490, extended the ring of walls southwards and produced the other great gates of the town; the Santa Maria gate kept its medieval form. The complex illustrates how Corinaldo's defences grew through successive building campaigns.