Hadrian's Gate
About
Antalya raised this triple-arched marble gate to honor Emperor Hadrian's visit to the city in 130 CE, more than a decade after Trajan's death. Two square towers flank three coffered arches that once carried a full second story and a row of honorific statues, now lost. It survives as the only one of the old city's original gates still standing intact. On 11 August 117 CE this gate did not yet exist and Hadrian had not yet even become emperor.
What happened here
The gate is where a town shows itself and where it counts what comes in. Traffic is funnelled between towers into arched passages — the wide ones for carts, the narrow ones for people — and closed at night with timber leaves shod in iron. A customs post takes duty on goods; a clerk records what passes. The outward face is the decorated one, with an inscription naming the emperor and the town, because this is the first thing a visitor reads. Guards are usually the town's own watchmen rather than soldiers. Just outside, the tombs begin; just inside, the shops. In a town whose walls have long stopped mattering militarily, the gate is kept up anyway, for the look of the thing.
Sources
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →