Arch of Augustus.
In Dennis’ admirable account of Perugia he gives a full description of this arch:—
“The best preserved and grandest of all the gates of Perugia,” he says, “is the Arco d’Augusto, so called from the inscription, Augusta Perusia, over the arch. It is formed of regular masonry of travertine, uncemented, in courses of 18 inches high; some of the blocks being 3 or 4 feet in length. The masonry of the arch hardly corresponds with that below it and is probably of subsequent date and Roman, as the inscription seems to testify, though the letters are not necessarily coeval with the structure. The arch is skew or oblique; and the gate is double, like those of Volterra and Cosa. Above the arch is a frieze of six Ionic colonnettes, fluted, alternating with shields; and from this springs another arch, now blocked up, surmounted by a second frieze of Ionic pilasters, not fluted. All the work above the lower arch is evidently of later date than the original construction of the gateway.... This gate stands recessed from the line of the city wall, and is flanked on either hand by a tower, projecting about 20 feet, and rising, narrowing upwards, to a level with the top of the wall above the gate. The masonry of these towers, to the height of the imposts of the arch, corresponds with that of the gate itself, and seems to be the original structure, all above that height is of a later period.... The gate still forms one of the entrances to the city, though there is a populous suburb without its walls. Its appearance is most imposing. The lofty towers, like ponderous obelisks, truncated—the tall archway recessed between them—the frieze of shields and colonnettes above it—the second arch soaring over all, a gallery, it may be, whence to annoy the foe—the venerable masonry overgrown with moss, or dark with the breath of ages—form a whole which carries the mind most forcibly into the past.”
The history of the arch of Augustus, or Porta urbica etrusca, has been given again and again by local and by foreign guide-books and historians, but we know of no better account than the above by Dennis, and little is left to say on the subject here. In speaking of Etruscan walls in another part of his book, Dennis remarks that one of their most striking features is the apparent newness of the stone. The big blocks of travertine on the Arco d’Augusto are as sharp almost as on the day when the Etruscans brought them up the hill, something like three thousand years ago, the marks of the individual masons are perfectly clear upon their faces, and time has mellowed the light and graceful colonnade of the Renaissance and Roman architecture, as much or more than that of the vanished people.
For a vivid first impression of the city one should certainly enter it from its northern side, and pass at once into its grim, dark, mediæval streets, through these splendid early portals. The usual approach from the station, which is certainly no quicker and much more tedious, gives nothing like the same impression of the real Perugia, which we love to read about and study.
