PORTA PIA

Porta Pia is an important gate, famous, obviously, because of the Capture of Rome, happened on September 20th 1870. The Italian army broke entered Rome through this gate, defeated the troops of the Papal State and completed the Italian Unification process.

The importance of Porta Pia lays beyond this event. The reason is that the Gate is one of the last – or perhaps the last – Michelangelo’s ouvres. This is incredibly a very less known fact.
Near the Gate, you can spot the Aurelian Walls and the Monument to the Capture of Rome, which changed the destiny of the Eternal City. In few yards we have many signs of the History of Italy and Rome. Last but not least, the Ministry of Economics took over the 18th Century remains of Villa Patrizi for its own building as well.

Porta Pia was built by Michelangelo in order to repeal the function of the ancient Porta Nomentana on the Aurelian Walls (now closed). It happened on the initiative of Pope Pius IV Medici (1599-1565), between 1561 and 1565.
The aim of the Pope was to improve the viability after the rapid urbanization of the area, which made Porta Nomentana unfit to be used. Precisely, the Pope wanted a more appropriate roadbed for the boulevard, which took from him the name of Via Pia (now Via XX Settembre). The pontiff wanted to directly connect its own residence on the Quirinale hill with Via Nomentana. This urban regeneration project started in the 15th century in order to optimize the transports of goods and the pilgrim visits.

We don’t have the original Michelangelo’s project and we still are unable to determine if the elderly Master could have managed the Gate construction personally. It was probably assigned to his disciples and collaborators. For sure, Michelangelo died (1564) before the completion, run soon after by his disciple and collaborator Jacopo del Duca, who supervised the works at the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, another masterpiece.

In the first place we admire that Porta Pia, which was fortified for difensive reasons, outstands the line of the Wall: this feature enhances the visual impact.
The facade projected by Michelangelo is open to the inner city and to the present Via XX Settembre. In order to make a comparison, we can assume that the monumental part of Porta San Paolo (dating back to the 5th century) addresses the outer city, toward Via Ostiense. The same is for Porta San Giovanni, which is a later work. The Red Guide of the Touring Club explains that Porta Pia is a ‘transition ouvre to the Baroque, because of a freedom of invention which renews the Urban Gate model, already unsual to address the inner city‘. The design of Porta Pia can be releated to the movement of Mannerism, the historical and artistic trends after the Renaissance and before the Baroque. Francois Nizet considers it a “Baroque forerunner”. It is very interesting the fusion between the Classical model with the imaginative decoration.

On the gate, we can admire a paten covered by a stole remembers trays and towels used by barbers. Based on a ironic interpretation, there is even a cube-shaped soap. Michelangelo could have hint at a popular tradition by which Pope Pius IV belonged to a family of enriched barbers from Milan. Michelangelo’s revenge was caused by the disrespectful manner of the Pope when he asked the estimate to the Master, as if he was an unknown artisan. The Pope was a Milan born Medici: no ties has been found between the Milan and the Florence based Medici family. Apart from that, on the gate there is the Medici coat of arms, which proves a close political relationship between the two families.

The facade is made of bricks and is adorned by precious battlements. It is divided by a travertine portal with grooved pilasters and a composite tympanum. The double row of the windows is very interesting: below larger windows with a tympanum, above smaller windows which a rich frame. Above the main compact body it is possible to notice a thinner structure that from afar it could look like a tower in line with the central portal.

The Medici coat of arms is flanked to by two masculine and muscled angels, clearly in Michelangelo’s style and sculpted by Nardo de’ Rossi. Pope Pius IX coat of arms is carved out with an epigraph that reminds of the attic reconstruction, probably damaged by a lightning 200 years before and made by Vespignani in 1853.

In 1869 the backside in Neoclassical style was made by Virginio Vespignani, Pope Pius IX’s great architect, decorated by two statues that shows Saint Agnes and Saint Alexander, damaged during the Capture of Rome and there relocated in 1929. The Pope thought that the two Saints saved his life while he was visiting the collapsing Convento di S. Agnese in 1855.

Translated by
Marco Di Caprio

Sitography:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porta_Pia
https://www.romasegreta.it/castro-pretorio/porta-pia.html
https://www.roma2pass.it/porta-pia/
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/papa-pio-iv_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/
https://www.turismoroma.it/it/luoghi/porta-pia
Photos:
http://massolopedia.it/porta-pia/
On Porta San Paolo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8gTwM-7rW8
On the Aurelian walls:
http://massolopedia.it/le-mura-aureliane/
On Rome in general:
http://massolopedia.it/category/roma/

Bibliography:
It is always useful the precise and concise Red Guide of the Italian Touring Club and La Grande Guida di Roma by Claudio Rendina (In Italian).