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A city gate is a gate which is, or was, set within a city wall. It is a type of fortified gateway.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2009) |
A city gate is a gate which is, or was, set within a city wall. It is a type of fortified gateway.
City gates were traditionally built to provide a point of controlled access to and departure from a walled city for people, vehicles, goods and animals. Depending on their historical context they filled functions relating to defense, security, health, trade, taxation, and representation, and were correspondingly staffed by military or municipal authorities. The city gate was also commonly used to display diverse kinds of public information such as announcements, tax and toll schedules, standards of local measures, and legal texts. It could be heavily fortified, ornamented with heraldic shields, sculpture or inscriptions, or used as a location for warning or intimidation, for example by displaying the heads of beheaded criminals or public enemies.
Notably in Denmark, many market towns used to have at least one city gate mostly as part of the city's fortifications, but during the Age of Absolutism their functions become closely linked to the collection of customs, the so-called octroi, which from 1660 onwards was charged to the market town's coffers. When absolutism in Denmark came to an end after the revolutions of 1848, gate consumption was abolished in 1852, and since then the city gates also began to disappear. [1]
Medieval Danish city gates are found today only in Vesterport, Faaborg, and Mølleporten, Stege, as well as in Flensburg, today in Germany. Further city gates, in one form or another, can be found across the world in cities dating back to ancient times to around the 19th century. Many cities would close their gates after a certain curfew each night, for example, a bigger one like Prague or a smaller one like the one in Flensburg, in the north of Germany.
With increased stability and freedom, many walled cities removed such fortifications as city gates, although many still survive; albeit for historic interest rather than security. Many surviving gates have been heavily restored, rebuilt or new ones created to add to the appearance of a city, such as Bab Bou Jalous in Fes. With increased levels of traffic, city gates have come under threat in the past for impeding the flow of traffic, such as Temple Bar Gate in London which was removed in the 19th century.
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Porta San Giovanni is a gate in the Aurelian Wall of Rome, Italy, named after the nearby Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran.
The Porta Asinaria is a gate in the Aurelian Walls of Rome. Dominated by two protruding tower blocks and associated guard rooms, it was built between 271 and 275 AD, at the same time as the Wall itself. Unlike most of the other gates, it was not rebuilt or fortified by Honorius or restored by Theoderic.
The Porta Nomentana was one of the gates in the Aurelian Walls of Rome, Italy. It is located along viale del Policlinico, around 70 m east of Porta Pia. It is now blocked and merely a boundary wall for the British Embassy.
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The Serrans Gate or Serranos Gate, also known as Serrans Towers or Serranos Towers is one of the twelve gates that formed part of the ancient city wall, the Christian Wall, of the city of Valencia, Spain. It was built in Valencian Gothic style at the end of the 14th century. Its name is probably due to its location in the northwest of the old city centre, making it the entry point for the royal road connecting Valencia with the comarca or district of Els Serrans as well as the entry point for the royal road to Barcelona, or because the majority of settlers near there in the time of James I of Aragon were from the area around Teruel, whose inhabitants were often called serrans by the Valencians. Alternatively, the gate may also have been named after an important family, the Serrans, who lived in a street with the same name.
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Media related to City gates at Wikimedia Commons
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