Porta San Giovanni

Listen first. Buses sigh to a stop. Scooters thread through the traffic. Somewhere behind you, the bells of a great basilica mark the hour. Under your feet the pavement is warm, worn smooth, a little uneven where tree roots push up from below. In front of you rises a long wall of ancient brick, faded to the colour of dry earth. One wide arch of pale stone cuts through it. This is Porta San Giovanni, one of the main gates of Rome, and people have passed through this line of wall for well over a thousand years.

Before we look at the gate itself, look at the wall it sits in. These are the Aurelian Walls. The Emperor Aurelian ordered them in the 270s, at a time when Rome felt threatened. For centuries the city had not needed walls. Its armies had kept enemies far away, on distant frontiers. Then invasions came closer, and the capital needed protection again. The builders worked fast. In places they simply folded existing buildings, tombs and aqueduct arches into the new defensive line.

Run your eye along the brickwork. You will see patches of different colours and textures. Some bricks are thin and sharp-edged. Others are rougher, set in thicker mortar. The wall shows centuries of repair, because emperors, Gothic kings and popes all patched and raised it. A wall like this is never really finished. It is a long conversation between builders who never met. Each generation added its own layer and left the older work in place underneath.

Now the gate. The arch in front of you is not ancient Roman at all. It is a Renaissance gate, opened in 1574 under Pope Gregory the Thirteenth. The architect was Giacomo Del Duca, a Sicilian who had worked with Michelangelo. His design is restrained. There is one large opening, faced in travertine, the pale local limestone you see across Rome. Above it, the pope placed an inscription in Latin, carved to record his work for every traveller who came this way.

Why did Rome need a new gate here? The answer stands just a few steps to your side. Look along the wall and you will find an older, smaller gate, flanked by two rounded towers. That is the Porta Asinaria, an original gate of the Aurelian Walls. Its name probably comes from an ancient road or a family, though scholars are not fully certain. By the sixteenth century the old passage was too low and too narrow. The ground had risen around it, and traffic had outgrown it.

So here is the first surprise many visitors miss. You are looking at two gates, side by side, from two worlds. The old Roman one, half sunk into the raised ground, carries the memory of late antiquity. The new papal one carries the confidence of Counter-Reformation Rome, a period when the Catholic Church rebuilt the city with new streets, fountains and churches. Stand between them for a moment and you can see roughly a thousand years of history in a single glance.

The old gate also holds a darker story. During the long wars of the sixth century, the Gothic king Totila besieged Rome. The Byzantine historian Procopius wrote that the city fell in 546 when soldiers guarding this stretch of wall opened a gate to the enemy. Historians usually link that betrayal to the Porta Asinaria. Walls can stop an army. They cannot stop a guard who decides to unlock the door from the inside.

The new gate took its name from its neighbour. Turn around and look up. Those enormous statues standing along the skyline belong to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, San Giovanni in Laterano in Italian. It is the cathedral of Rome, the seat of the pope as Bishop of Rome. Many visitors assume Saint Peter's holds that title. It does not. The Lateran ranks first among the churches of the city, and this gate was built to welcome pilgrims straight towards its doors.

For centuries this was the gate for travellers from the south. The road outside led towards the hills south of Rome and, beyond them, towards Naples. Today the same direction is followed by the Via Appia Nuova, the New Appian Way. It runs out from the gate as a long, busy commercial street. It should not be confused with the ancient Appian Way, which leaves the city from a different gate further south.

The square at your back has a modern identity too. Romans know Piazza di Porta San Giovanni as a place for crowds. Every first of May, a huge free concert for Workers' Day fills this open space with music and banners. Political rallies and marches have gathered here for generations. On an ordinary afternoon you would never guess it. But on those days, this quiet lawn becomes one of the loudest spots in Italy.

There is a lighter tradition as well. On the night of June twenty-third, the eve of the feast of Saint John, this neighbourhood used to fill with stalls and families. Locals say that witches flew over Rome that night, and that eating snails would keep bad luck away. It is folklore, not history, but some Romans still order a plate of snails in late June. The custom is a small, stubborn piece of the old city.

Walk through the arch and the mood changes. Outside the walls you reach the San Giovanni district, a residential area of apartment blocks, cafés and shops. Just beyond the gate, on Via Sannio, a covered market sells clothes, shoes and leather goods. Romans come here for bargains rather than souvenirs. It is a good place to hear the city speaking its own everyday language, far from the main tourist routes.

Before you leave, come back to the arch once more. Put your hand on the travertine if you can reach it. The stone feels slightly rough, with small holes in its surface, like a sponge turned to rock. Look at the grey traffic flowing beneath a gate that once saw horses, carts and pilgrims on foot. The traffic changed. The direction did not. As you walk on, notice how often the brown line of the wall appears again between the buildings. It still holds the old city together.