Porta Septentrionalis
About
The Tangier Gate formed the northern entrance through Volubilis's city wall, one of six main gates built into the 168-169 CE defensive circuit raised under Marcus Aurelius. Travelers and merchants passed beneath its arch on the road linking Volubilis to the coastal city of Tingis, modern Tangier, from which the gate took its name. Flanking towers gave defenders a clear line of sight down the approach road. Since the gate belongs to a wall system built roughly half a century after Trajan's death, no fortified northern entrance existed at Volubilis in 117 CE.
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
Nearby
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 →