Porta Boncompagni, Porta Caterina Cybo e Porta Malatesta

Three gates survive from Camerino's historic walls: Porta Boncompagni, Porta Caterina Cybo and Porta Malatesta. Their arches and names recall the city's centuries as a fortified capital.

Why it matters

Camerino's walls made it a capital, and these gates are among their most legible survivors. Together they trace the city's growth in stone: a fourteenth-century ring that doubled the town, a sixteenth-century extension towards the fortress, and the movement of a ducal court.

What to notice

Porta Boncompagni was built around 1370 during an expansion of the walls; its façade was reworked in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Porta Caterina Cybo retains a fourteenth-century round arch and wooden doors; it was also known as Porta Cisterna. Porta Malatesta, near the Rocca Borgesca, bears the name of Giovanna Malatesta, wife of Giulio Cesare da Varano. Its outer face has a round arch flanked by ashlar columns.

Context and history

A first circuit of Camerino's enceinte held until the 1300s and survived the sack of 1259 and later earthquakes. Around 1370, a new ring took in the expanding borough, roughly doubling the walled area; Porta Boncompagni dates to that campaign. In the sixteenth century the wall extended southwest towards the Borgia fortress, where Porta Malatesta stands. Porta Caterina Cybo kept its medieval form while other gates were rebuilt or demolished. Later centuries absorbed much of the circuit into houses, leaving these gates as witnesses to the city's defensive history.