Key to Umbria: Città di Castello
 


Palazzo della Porta (18th century)


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The two columns that flank the main entrance to Palazzo della Porta (and possibly others in the courtyard behind it) come from an ancient building.  According to tradition, this was the temple that Pliny the Younger built in the municipium in the 1st century AD:

  1. ✴In his Letter XXXVIII to Fabatus, (his wife’s grandfather), he wrote that:  “There is a town near my estate, called Tifernum Tiberinum, which, with more affection than wisdom, put itself under my patronage when I was yet a youth.  These people celebrate my arrival among them, express the greatest concern when I leave them, and have public rejoicing whenever they hear of my preferments.  By way of requiting their kindnesses ... I have built a temple in this place, at my own expense, and as it is finished, it would be a sort of impiety to put off its dedication any longer”. 

  2. ✴In an earlier letter to the Emperor Trajan, the temple was still in the planning stage and Tifernum was not explicitly named: “After your late sacred father [the Emperor Nerva] had ... exhorted and encouraged the public to acts of munificence, I implored his permission to remove the several statues that I had of the former emperors to my corporation [i.e. to the municipal authorities of Tifernum], and  .... to add his own to their number.  ... He was pleased to grant my request, and ... I immediately ... wrote to the decurii [magistrates] to request that they would allot a piece of ground upon which I might build a temple at my own expense; and they ... offered me the choice of any site I might think proper.  However, [various distraction, including the death of Nerva] prevented my proceeding with that design.  But I have now ... a convenient opportunity of making an excursion ...  My first request, then, is that you would permit me to adorn the temple I am going to erect with your statue ....”

While it is possible that this temple was near the later site of the Duomo (an hence of Palazzo della Porta), there is no hard evidence to this effect.

The arms above the capitals of the columns that flank the entrance suggest that at least two other families lived here before the della Porta family:

  1. ✴the Berioli family, whose arms feature a snail; and

  2. ✴the Nostri family, whose arms feature two crossed lilies.

It now houses an insurance company, the Assicurazione Zurich di Lelli.





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