Description
The Arco dei Gavi is a Roman arch in Verona, next to Castelvecchio, among the few honorary arches of antiquity built for a private family and not for an emperor. It was erected around the middle of the first century to celebrate the gens Gavia.
The thing to look at is the facade with four tall Corinthian columns on a pedestal, two in the center holding up a pediment like a small aedicule. In the middle is the main bay, with piers decorated with carved candelabra in plant motifs. At the sides are two narrow niches, which held statues of members of the family.
The sides too have something unusual: most Roman arches have a blank wall here, while this one has a minor bay with a window above. The interior has a flat coffered ceiling, and in one coffer you can make out the face of a Gorgon surrounded by rosettes.
Then there is the signature of Lucius Vitruvius Cerdo, written twice on the inner piers, so that it can be read both entering and leaving. Roman architects almost never signed their work: this case is extremely rare.
Cerdo was a freed Greek slave. The name Vitruvius fired the imagination of the Renaissance: it recalls the author of "De architectura," and some suppose he was one of his freedmen. For this reason the arch was studied, drawn and copied by Palladio, Sangallo, Serlio, Falconetto, Sanmicheli, Bellini and Mantegna.
Its story is a journey. It stood on the Via Postumia, just outside the Roman walls. In the Middle Ages it was stripped and incorporated into the new circuit as a city gate, the Porta San Zeno; then it entered the defensive system of Castelvecchio, with a guard post inside the opening.
In 1550 the Venetian Republic ceded the area to private owners, who freed the arch from the walls and little houses. But in 1805 the French military engineers had it taken apart, for reasons of military security and traffic.
The blocks were surveyed one by one, ended up in Piazza Cittadella and then in safety in the arches of the Arena. In 1812 Giuseppe Barbieri made a reduced-scale wooden model of it, kept at the archaeological museum of the Roman Theater.
The arch was reassembled by anastylosis and inaugurated on October 28, 1932 in the little square of Castelvecchio. Where it stood before is marked by a rectangle of marble in the road in front of the castle.
The thing to look at is the facade with four tall Corinthian columns on a pedestal, two in the center holding up a pediment like a small aedicule. In the middle is the main bay, with piers decorated with carved candelabra in plant motifs. At the sides are two narrow niches, which held statues of members of the family.
The sides too have something unusual: most Roman arches have a blank wall here, while this one has a minor bay with a window above. The interior has a flat coffered ceiling, and in one coffer you can make out the face of a Gorgon surrounded by rosettes.
Then there is the signature of Lucius Vitruvius Cerdo, written twice on the inner piers, so that it can be read both entering and leaving. Roman architects almost never signed their work: this case is extremely rare.
Cerdo was a freed Greek slave. The name Vitruvius fired the imagination of the Renaissance: it recalls the author of "De architectura," and some suppose he was one of his freedmen. For this reason the arch was studied, drawn and copied by Palladio, Sangallo, Serlio, Falconetto, Sanmicheli, Bellini and Mantegna.
Its story is a journey. It stood on the Via Postumia, just outside the Roman walls. In the Middle Ages it was stripped and incorporated into the new circuit as a city gate, the Porta San Zeno; then it entered the defensive system of Castelvecchio, with a guard post inside the opening.
In 1550 the Venetian Republic ceded the area to private owners, who freed the arch from the walls and little houses. But in 1805 the French military engineers had it taken apart, for reasons of military security and traffic.
The blocks were surveyed one by one, ended up in Piazza Cittadella and then in safety in the arches of the Arena. In 1812 Giuseppe Barbieri made a reduced-scale wooden model of it, kept at the archaeological museum of the Roman Theater.
The arch was reassembled by anastylosis and inaugurated on October 28, 1932 in the little square of Castelvecchio. Where it stood before is marked by a rectangle of marble in the road in front of the castle.