The presence of a western city gate is documented in the medieval city walls of
Grosseto, known as Porta di San Michele, named after a nearby church dedicated to
Saint Michael. This gate was demolished in the 16th century when the
Grand Duchy of Tuscany built the new
Medici walls (1565–1593), and a new bastion, the Bastion of San Michele, was constructed on its site. For over two centuries, Grosseto had only one access point, the
Porta Reale (later renamed Porta Vecchia) on the southern side of the walls, until Porta Nuova was opened in 1755 on the northern side. With the city's population growth and urban expansion outside the walls at the turn of the 20th century, a new gateway was deemed necessary. In 1927, under the initiative of the podestà Ado Scaramucci, the city held a national competition for a new city plan and expansion project, which included a new gate. The winning design by architects
Cesare Chiodi and Giuseppe Merlo proposed a monumental three-arch gate in the classicism style of
Giovanni Muzio and the
Novecento group. In 2002, with the transformation of Grosseto's historic center into a
limited traffic zone, Porta Corsica became the sole vehicle access point to the center, equipped with an electronic gate installed in 2008. ==Description==