Indice dei fascicoli

Abstract: The city gates built by Pius IV in Rome reflect a papal strategy which would affect the following three centuries of town development. Each gate was carefully planned on a main street leading into the city which shaped the surrounding urban areas through peculiar symbolic and social features. So Porta del Popolo – the major one according to social rank – was to be the privileged entrance to Rome, while Porta Pia was intended as the backdrop of the Strada Pia that aimed at colonizing the Roman rural “disabitato” by an enclave of lavish suburban Villas; Porta San Giovanni was conceived as a monumental passage way linking the aristocratic estates situated in the Castelli Romani with the Cathedral and Santa Maria Maggiore within the Walls. Lastly, the formal features of the Borgo’s gates, opened through the brand new fortifications of the Vatican Hill, relied on the different conditions of the entries to St. Peter’s square and the so-called Civitas Pia, the new middle-class neighbourhood founded by Pius IV himself. Every gate was therefore designed according to its symbolic rank, which conditioned their architectural forms, thus resulting astonishingly eclectic. The building of each gate has been reconstructed from the archival data, singling out its architects and builders, discussing in particular the issue of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s authorship of Porta Pia.

Keywords: City gates; Pio IV; Michelangelo; Porta San Giovanni; Porta del Popolo; Porta Pia.