Foundation of Verona and construction of the walls The city of Verona was, since ancient times, a strategic location for the control of the transalpine routes that connected the
Po Valley with
central Europe via the
Adige Valley. The temporary occupation of the city in 102-101 B.C. by the
Cimbri revealed for the first time in the eyes of the
Roman Senate the importance of the control and defense of this town, at that time still under the rule of the
Venetian allies. There is a lack of knowledge of the ancient fortified
oppidum that stood on the San Pietro hill, the site where the protohistoric settlement of Verona had developed; only a section of a
opus quadratum bastion made of local tuff, preceded by a
counterscarp wall, made it possible to infer how the Venetian settlement had been fortified in 90 B.C. The final Romanization of
Transpadan Gaul, and thus of Verona, took place in the spring of 49 B.C., when the tribune of the plebs
Lucius Roscius Fabatus proposed a law, named in his honor
Lex Roscia, granting Roman citizenship to the inhabitants between the
Po and the
Alps. The law passed without opposition: Verona became a Roman
municipium and was administratively regulated according to the normal
quattuorviral constitution. Having gained control of Verona, Rome's rulers decided to fortify the city so as to consolidate the Alpine border and create a bridgehead for possible future military ventures. An issue immediately arose concerning the location of the settlement. As mentioned, the town of Venetian origin had sprung up along the slopes of St. Peter's Hill, in an area that was no longer sufficient either for the future development of the settlement or to allow for its orderly planning, typical of Roman town planning. A new center was therefore founded on the other bank of the
Adige River, where its wide bends formed a kind of natural peninsula, a valid defense against possible attacks. This also made it possible to build only two sections of curtain wall along the southern side of the city, the only one that was not naturally defended by the river. The curtain wall was provided with two main gates,
Porta Iovia (now called Borsari) along the
decumanus maximus and
Porta Leoni on the
cardinalus maximus. A series of towers were placed at the
decumanus and minor
cardinus that acted as
posterns: some of them were provided with a passage for chariots in the center of the street and two smaller side passages for pedestrians, at the sidewalks. Around 10 B.C., two large monumental gates were built on the left side of the Adige, one of which was located north of the ancient
pons lapideus and one south of the "new"
pons marmoreus, now called St. Stephen's Gate and St. Faustinus' Gate, respectively; they were built, for matters of urban decorum, quite similar to those located on the right side of the Adige. All four major gates, already around the first half of the 1st century, underwent renovation and monumentalization of the main elevations, which were made of marble, hiding the ancient brick elevations.
Restorations and extensions following the first barbarian invasions Around the middle of the third century, Verona found itself at the center of a clash between the legitimate emperor,
Philip the Arab, and his rival,
Decius. This dispute, which ended in a
battle fought at the city and the death of the emperor, encouraged in the second half of the century the attack of barbarian populations on the borders of the
Roman Empire, and reaffirmed the strategic importance of Roman Verona. The center, in particular, went through a moment of serious danger when, in 258, the
Alemanni broke through
Rhaetia and the Adige Valley into the Po Valley. Emperor
Gallienus succeeded in defeating them under the walls of
Mediolanum. This episode made it clear that the
Danubian limes was becoming increasingly fragile and insufficient to protect the borders of the peninsula. It was precisely for this reason that Gallienus decided to return Verona to its role as an Italic bulwark, which it had already fulfilled during the late Republican age. The old republican walls were no longer as effective as they once were. The city's imposing
Roman amphitheater was located just outside them and, if conquered by enemy forces, could pose a danger to the city itself. Gallienus therefore decided to renovate and reinforce the Republican-era city wall, including by leaning square reinforcing towers against the outer face, and to build an addition to the 550-meter curtain wall, so as to enclose and protect the amphitheater as well. The work lasted only seven months, from April 3 to December 4, 265: the remarkable speed with which the new curtain wall was built is revealed by the extensive use of bare materials in a rather haphazard masonry. The suburban neighborhoods that had developed between the republican curtain wall and the natural depression of the Adigetto, thus outside the more consolidated fabric, remained excluded from the defensive system because they were too extensive and difficult to defend. The emperor may have also fortified the other side of the Adige River, to defend the monumental area that had sprung up on the slopes of St. Peter's Hill, in particular the
Roman theater, and the access to the two bridges, the
pons lapideus and the
pons marmoreus. Through these interventions Gallienus succeeded in endowing Verona with once again harmonious and effective defenses, suitable for controlling both river traffic and the route of the Adige valley, from where the danger of aggression was greater. Outside the curtain wall, to the south of the city center, there must have been several forts used as defensive outposts of the city, built or renovated during the interventions enforced by Emperor Gallienus. One of the forts would have been located near an important road junction, at which the road coming from
Hostilia and the southern ring road with the
Via Postumia and the
Via Gallica converged. makes it possible to trace the Republican and Imperial walls (in bright green) and those built by Theodoric (pinkish) Around the beginning of the 6th century, a second city wall was commissioned by Theodoric, who devoted great attention to the city, The extensions and this second curtain wall were made, like the Gallienian one, through the use of spoil materials, although in this case the construction was less hasty and the construction technique of decidedly more careful workmanship. Written sources include the
Iconografia rateriana, a 10th-century map depicting Verona, in which the Republican-era curtain wall and the one surrounding the amphitheater are depicted in a bright green color, while the outermost curtain wall to the right of the Adige and the hillside are in a pinkish color, thus lending greater credibility to the hypothesis that the latter two are contemporary. From a material point of view, an indication of the construction of a new curtain wall that would have protected the hill comes from the fact that the
apsidal part of the
church of St. Stephen, a building dating back to the fifth century, was sacrificed for the construction of the curtain wall. These defenses remained substantially unchanged from then until the pre-communal era due to continuous maintenance; later, with the construction of the outermost communal and Scaliger walls, those of Roman origin lost their functionality and usefulness: over the centuries they were partly tampered with and partly reused by houses and palaces that leaned against them. == Description ==