The Porta della Mandria is a Roman-era gate in the walls of Fano, which from 220 BC allowed people to leave the city towards Pesaro.
What to see
Having escaped, at least in part, the ancient demolitions and the recent, even more devastating ones, the gate opens in the middle of an interturrium in the stretch of walls called «della Mandria», from which it takes its name. The name comes from the medieval habit of taking herds out to graze in this area of the walls. The gate also allowed commercial carts to pass: on the stones of the arch can be seen the marks left by the metal wheel hubs constantly scraping as they turned towards the centre. It was part of a long circuit of 1760 metres, marked by 28 towers. Forgotten along with the rest of the wall, it came back to light in 1925 during one of the attempts, fortunately averted, to demolish the walls.
It is the only stretch of the city walls that is truly regular in every part, which suggests it was an original construction. The gate is exactly centred and in line with the road that reached it. It is intact up to the springing of the arch, in parallelepiped blocks of local yellow sandstone in opus quadratum, that is in uniform courses of squared blocks laid one on another; the upper part is the result of careful restoration using the surviving blocks, put back and completed with brick. It was built to a precise plan, based on the symmetrical arrangement of its components: it cannot compete in magnificence with the contemporary Porta d'Augusto, but the erosion of one of the two side piers, caused by the passing of carts, shows how busy the road was.
Visiting
The gate is in the stretch of walls called della Mandria, in Fano. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
The whole stretch of wall, with the four towers at its ends, measures 167 metres, about 565 Roman feet, and is the only truly regular stretch of the circuit.
