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Abstract: The door has simulated an important descriptive tradition in Italian literature. This interest came from Greek and Latin literature. Homer and Virgil have described the gate of dreams, and Ovid shows those of the sun. The ekphrasis, considered as a literary description of a work of art, assumed during the centuries the role of a topos, connected mostly to visions, dreams or to the passage of the protagonist into another dimension. In order to analyse the ekphrasis of the door in the narrative, I decided to focus this paper on three books that follow the same narrative tradition connected to the theme of the dream, L’amorosa Visione of Giovanni Boccaccio, The Stanze of Angelo Poliziano and the Hypnerotomachia Polifili of Francesco Colonna. The aim of this paper is to show the strict correlation that exist between the representation of the door, and the entry into another space, usually represented by the kingdom of Venus.

Keywords: Ekphrasis; History of modern Architecture; Urban History; Triumphal arches; Boccaccio, Poliziano, Hypnerotomachia Polifili; Francesco Colonna; Renaissance Dream.