avanzi di struttura muraria

At the edge of a modern wall, a Roman gate endures in a state of eloquent ruin. Its floor plan is now illegible, the original form long since obscured by 19th-century masonry. What remains is a substantial stretch of fortification, built of that most Roman of materials: opus caementicium. The core is a rough concrete of sizeable stone fragments and river pebbles, bound in a gritty, yellowish-grey lime mortar, flecked with quartz. On one side alone, the facing survives: opus reticulatum, the decorative net-like pattern of small, square-cut blocks of local limestone. The cubilia are not uniform, some square, some trapezoidal, ranging from 8 to 10 centimetres across, and they are set in irregular, tilting rows, with the mortar gaping between them. It is a fragmentary, stubborn witness to the engineering of a frontier, now half-dissolved into the fabric of a later city.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.