Porta Vittoria

On the eastern side of the city’s perimeter, where the ground alone is nearly flat and slopes gently inward, stands Porta Vittoria, a gate that, even in ruin, speaks of adaptation. Early Christian gates of this region were often built as oblique corridors, a defensive design forcing attackers into a narrow, angled passage. Here, however, the structure is more complicated than elsewhere. The northern wall had to shift direction about five metres from the entrance, creating an awkward angle to meet the gate’s own form.

Only the southern cheek remains, two courses of stone blocks and a hinge socket some twelve centimetres across, deliberately spaced from the wall to let the door swing more freely. Scant traces of the right cheek lie flush with the ground, perhaps just foundations.

On the gate’s right side sits a second-century BC kiln, built for black-glaze pottery. Its presence suggests this side of the gate was radically altered to allow access to the furnace, and that, for a time, the gate lost some of its original purpose to industry.

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