page_title: Walls of Milan
section_title: Spanish walls
hierarchical_section_title: Walls of Milan / Spanish walls
caption_attribution_description: English: Milan Topography on 1573 Italiano: Pianta topografico-prospettica di Milano.
context_page_description: The city Milan, Italy, has had three different systems of defending walls. The oldest, Roman walls were developed in two stages, the first in the Republican and the second in the Imperial era. The second wall system was realized in the Middle Ages, after the destruction of the city by Frederick I Barbarossa. Finally, the latest wall system was built by the Spanish rulers. While very little remains of these walls, their structure is clearly reflected in the urbanistic layout of the city. In particular, modern Milan has two roughly circular rings of streets, namely the "Cerchia dei Navigli" and the "Cerchia dei Bastioni", which essentially correspond to the Medieval and Spanish walls, respectively. Note that a third ring of roads just beyond the Inner Ring Road, called the External Ring Road, does not owe itself to any old city walls; but was part of the 1884 Beruto Plan for the city of Milan, created and named after a municipal engineer and public servant to the local city government.
context_section_description: The so-called "Mura Spagnole" (Spanish Walls) of Milan were built between 1546 and 1560 in obedience to the will of Ferrante Gonzaga, city governor during the Spanish rule of Milan. The new wall system had an overall perimeter of about 11 km, much larger than that of the medieval walls; several traits of the walls were reinforced by moats obtained by the numerous canals surrounding the city. The perimeter of the Spanish walls essentially corresponds to what is now known as the "Cerchia dei Bastioni" ("Bastion Ring").
  The walls remained well into the 19th Century, but they lost their military purpose in the mid 18th Century, being adapted as a sort of panoramic promenade by governor Gian Luca Pallavicini. Stendhal has described this promenade in his diary Rome, Naples et Florence; at the time, a passer-by would be able to see the Duomo from anywhere on the walls. From the northern part of the walls, one would be able to see both the Duomo (if looking south) and the Alps (if looking north).
  The Spanish walls comprised 11 gates: Porta Romana, Porta Tosa (now Porta Vittoria), Porta Orientale (renamed Porta Venezia in 1860), Porta Nuova, Porta Comasina (renamed Porta Garibaldi in 1860), Porta Tenaglia, Porta Sempione, Porta Vercellina, Porta Ticinese, Porta Lodovica, and Porta Vigentina.
  When Milan was annexed to the Napoleonic Empire, governor Francesco Melzi d'Eril ordered the demolition of the Spanish walls and the replaced the original gates. At the time, the gates were to serve as customs duty stations, and their architecture was supposed to reflect the grandeur of the Napoleonic Empire as well as the role of Milan as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. As a consequence, many of Milan's modern "gates" are located where the Spanish gates used to be, but only date back to the 19th Century.
caption: Milan in 1573
exif: {}