Porta Leoni

Located on the maximum cardo of the Roman city, it is called by this name from the fifteenth century, due to the presence in the vicinity of a Roman stone sarcophagus with two lions (now placed behind the monument to Umberto I).

The door was 13 meters high (as the city walls), it had a square plan and an internal courtyard, double arches on the facades and galleries on the upper floors. The corners of the external front were flanked by two polygonal towers connecting to the walls. Numerous windows opened onto the towers and galleries.

In the I sec. B.C. it was built in tuff and brick; later, in the first century A.D. the façades of brick were placed against local white stone façades, which reflected the previous architectural structures, but had richer decorations.
What remains of the Porta dei Leoni is walled in a 13th century palace. (remodeled several times). It is half of the internal façade of the Republican age door, with the following stone façade: a single archway framed by a shrine, surmounted by curved and squared windows and, higher up, from what remains of an exedra (perhaps at the time adorned with statues) flanked by twisted columns.

Under via Leoni other remains of the monument came to light: part of the side wall (with the attack on the city walls), fragments of the pavement of the inner courtyard and the basements of the great towers (one left open, the other kept in the cellars of a building nearby).