Porta Pretoria

Porta Pretoria is the most important and perhaps most grandiose of the Roman gates. Known in the Middle Ages as Porta Sancti Ursi and later as "Porta de la Trinité", it stands on the decumanus maximus. It is flanked by two rectangular defence towers, has three fornices (arches, in simple terms) and an inner courtyard. Three openings were created in the double curtain wall, built at the end of the 1st century B.C.: a higher and wider one in the centre, and two lateral ones for pedestrians. Of the two defensive towers on either side connecting it to the walls, the northern one was incorporated into the tall medieval structure of the fortified house of the lords of Porte Saint-Ours (then of the Lords of Quart).