Porta Santa Lucia is one of the three medieval gates that still exist in Vicenza: it opens in the walls that Cansignorio della Scala had built in 1370 around the city's boroughs east of the ponte degli Angeli, and looks onto the Araceli quarter.
What to see
Above the gate, on the quarter side, the lion of Saint Mark remains, though half-chiselled away at the time of the Napoleonic arrival. The gate has been restored with some alterations, but it still exists. The stretch of walls begins a few tens of metres from the ponte degli Angeli, on the left bank of the Bacchiglione, and continues along the outer side of contrà Torretti, whose name recalls the small towers that punctuated the walls, and along contrà Mure Araceli, where the gate opens; from here, without a break, the walls continue outside contrà Mure Santa Lucia and Mure San Domenico. In contrà Mure Santa Lucia and Mure San Domenico you can still see stretches of wall without battlements, with truncated towers and tampered with by the houses, probably 18th-century, that have leaned against the walls to use them as support.
The circuit of 1370 enclosed the most populous and well-off part of the borough of San Vito, while the part left outside was called from then on the borough of Santa Lucia, after the oratory built in 1314 by the Camaldolese monks in place of their old church. The quarter has a history of resistance: on 20 May 1848 the Austrian counter-offensive led by General Nugent brought sixteen thousand men under the walls of Vicenza, between Porta Santa Lucia and Borgo Casale, covered by the fire of six cannon, but the assault was bloodily repulsed by the resistance of the Vicentine volunteers, aided by regular papal troops, and the common people of Santa Lucia, artisans and workers, stood beside the volunteers on the barricades. In memory of that day it was proposed to rename contrà Porta Santa Lucia «via XX Maggio», but the proposal went nowhere.
Visiting
The gate can be seen from the street, in contrà Porta Santa Lucia, near the church of Santa Maria in Araceli; it is a place of passage and has no hours, but any openings or visits should be checked.
Our editors' tip
Look up above the gate, on the quarter side, and find the lion of Saint Mark partly chiselled away at the time of the French arrival: it is the mark a change of regime left on the stone.
