Visiting Rieti is an experience that lead every tourist on a magnificent journey through time and history. The wonder of the historic town centre, enclosed in its wonderfully and perfectly preserved medieval walls, opens up before our eyes through so many doors that tell us about the evolution of our city, a jewel that sparkles in its own reflection.
Along the circuit of the medieval walls, which alternated the embankment with wall sections that are still fragmentarily visible in later buildings that have reused the materials, the Porta Quintia or Cintia opened to the west, the Porta Interocrina or Carana to the east, the Porta Romana to the south, on the city access viaduct.
During the High Middle Ages, Porta San Giovanni was opened in the northern side, along Via Pennina. The toponyms of Porta Cintia and Porta Romana followed the urban development, as they underlined, during the subsequent enlargement interventions, the new access gates to the city, one going up north, while the other, built extra pontem in 1586, included also the Borgo District. The current exedra, which isolates the door making it similar to a triumphal arch, dates back to the interventions of urban planning carried out by the architect Bazzani in the first decades of the twentieth century. The medieval circuit of the walls developed from the mid-13th century along the northern axis, extending the ramparts from east to west until it rejoined the course of the Velino river, that together with the artificial stretch of the Cavatella river, was a valid natural defense.