The area in front of Porta Garibaldi has always been the city’s entrance from the north since time immemorial, and when Spoleto was provided with a railway station, it became an even busier centre of traffic. Before the modern layout of the area took its shape, its main feature was the Ponte Sanguinario, used to enter the city by crossing the Tessino stream.

The gradual shifting of the riverbed northwards – a problem already mentioned in a town charter from the end of the 13th century – fatally contributed to the long-forgotten Roman bridge being confined to oblivion.

The ancient bridge would only be rediscovered in 1817 – as recalled by Achille Sansi in his ‘History of Spoleto’ – just when the foundations were laid for a new one, built to access to the city through Porta San Gregorio. This new bridge was completed a few years before pope Leo XII Annibale della Genga rearranged the whole area, demolishing the medieval Porta San Gregorio and raising the so-called Porta Leonina. As can be seen on some postcards from the 1910s, including one reproduced in the volume ‘Spoleto formato cartolina‘ (Spoleto in postcard format), the walking surface of the bridge is still relatively narrow.

Giuseppe Angelini Rota’s guide to Spoleto, written in 1929, states that the Garibaldi bridge was widened and rebuilt in 1922. Various photographs kept in the Carducci photo library, and others from a private collection, show the various ages of the viaduct. A photograph from the 1930s – showing banners of preparations in the town for a Beniamino Gigli concert – shows the profile of the bridge embellished with a balustrade.

Further renovation works after the post-war reconstruction of the Porta Leonina and the area’s street network fixing, were carried out in the 1960s, resulting in a layout which is very similar to the current one.

The Urban Sustainable Mobility Plan – a strategic tool contained in the Agenda Urbana to improve the urban environment, provide greater accessibility, improve safety, reduce pollution, and increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the transport of people and goods – provides for an arrangement of street furniture in the area around Ponte Garibaldi and Piazza Vittoria, as well as a more regular and orderly layout of the pedestrian and vehicle traffic.

NEWS ARCHIVES

• Dante in the Lands of the Duchy | 26 march 2021
• The City’s Remembrance Day | 19 March 2021
• The inauguration of the Vallocchia Urban Aqueduct | 12 March 2021
• Annibale della Genga and Porta San Gregorio | 5 March 2021
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the Festival Of Two Worlds | 26 February 2021
• August 1904. From a congress in Spoleto, the Federazione Nazionale delle Pubbliche Assistenze is born | 19 February 2021
• The Spoleto Carnival in posters from the 19th and 20th centuries, and in photos from the 1930s | 12 February 2021
• The Vocational School of Arts and Crafts | 8 February 2021
• December 1897: the Teatro Caio Melisso hosts the “Cinematograph” | 29 January 2021
• July 1904: first public phone booth in Spoleto | 15 January 2021
• Roman relics in the gardens of Spoleto | 8 January 2021
• Olive oil exhibition in 1930 | 18 December 2020
• The Town Hall in 1913 | 4 December 2020
• 1865: The third leg of the works on the Traversa Interna begins | 27 November 2020
• The birth of the Cotton Mill | 20 November 2020
• Racewalkers at the Giro della Rocca prepare themselves for the London Olympic Games: June, 1948 | 13 November 2020
• Teatro Nuovo: 10-11 September 1864 | 6 November 2020
• Images, August 1948. Teatro Nuovo, Spoleto, second edition of the competition for young opera singers | 30 October 2020
• The 1948 Mille Miglia in Spoleto. That time when Tazio Nuvolari… | 16 October 2020
• Beniamino Gigli in Spoleto in September, 1932 and August,1939 | 9 October 2020
• The Casina dell’Ippocastano | 2 October 2020
• Catalogue of public posters as documents of city chronicles | 25 September 2020
• 27 May 1948. When Gino Bartali crossed the finish line in Spoleto | 18 September 2020
• The Festival Of Two Worlds’ Yearbooks from 1975 to 1979 | 11 September 2020
• The 1967 Festival Of Two Worlds’ Yearbook | 26 August 2020
• The Festival Of Two Worlds’ Yearbooks #2 | 21 August 2020
• The Festival Of Two Worlds’ Yearbooks | 19 August 2020
• 1947-48: Motorcycling in Spoleto | 14 August 2020
• When the Spoleto soccer team’s name was Virtus | 7 August 2020
• Ads and commercials in 1910 Spoleto | 24 July 2020
• The Spoleto City Museum | 17 July 2020
• Restoration works at the Teatro Caio Melisso | 10 July 2020
• Folk feasts’ posters in early XXth-century Spoleto | 3 July 2020
• “Urban VIII on his way to Rome”: or the odd story of the Spoletan Bernini | 26 June 2020
• The ex Spoleto-Norcia Railway: from the first project to its opening | 19 June 2020
• Spoleto Tourist Guidebooks #3 | 12 June 2020
• Christo’s Art at the Festival of Two Worlds | 5 June 2020
• Raffaele Canè – Pictures | 29 May 2020
• Spoleto Tourist Guidebooks #2 | 22 May 2020
• Spoleto Tourist Guidebooks | 15 May 2020
• Pietro Mascagni: the concert at the Teatro Nuovo | 8 May 2020
• The cable car Spoleto-Monteluco | 1 May 2020
• Two days of aviation in Spoleto | 24 April 2020