mail: Bill Thayer

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A City Gate Ripped from its Context

A 1937 photo of the Arco di Augusto

The Fascist government of Italy usually did quite well by Roman remains: excavating, studying, restoring, landscaping: occasionally rebuilding from almost scratch (see the Porta Venere of Spello in Umbria, for example).

Here they didn't. Instead, they demolished some of the Roman walls and took down a very old bridge, or paved it over at least, by which the via Flaminia entered the city: anyway it's not there now, and the Ausa, in common with so many little creeks in cities the world over, now runs thru an underground conduit. The gate itself, a triumphal arch erected to commemorate Augustus' restoration of the Flaminia, has been isolated in a meaningless plot of grass and made the centerpiece of a traffic circle. The photo above is a record of this process.

Although this gate seems to be the oldest remaining Roman triumphal arch, it was never a spectacular one, and rapidly wound up being used just as a city gate. Therein, maybe, lies the clue.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the crenellations, they're not medieval: some century other than ours decided this gate looked better in the medieval style. Fashions change.

This is what the Arco di Augusto looked like when I was there in October 1997. If you click on this scaffolding, which at the time had been up for two years — the inhabitants of Rimini were as disappointed as I was — you will find yourself looking at a very good 1986 photo of this would‑you-believe‑it attractive Roman gate on Prof. Curran's Maecenas site, showing clearly the pediment, the Corinthian columns and the carefully sculptured tondi. (Click here for another photo, on yet another site: beautiful, but 400K.)