Walking along via Pellini until you come upon via Antinori, before running into the malevolent little orange posts fitted with speed cameras that lend grace to the view, on your right you can admire the Porta Sant’Andrea, through which one enters the Santa Susanna district.
Set between Etruscan and Umbrian territories in a commanding position over the Tiber, Perugia arises from settlements that came together in the 6th century BC on the Landone and Sole hills. The two hills were originally separated by a saddle – Corso Vannucci – which, in the medieval period, was filled in and levelled and, to judge by the state of the paving, never touched again.
The construction of Perugia’s Etruscan walls, in dry-laid travertine blocks, takes place between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC. Their perimeter, measuring roughly three kilometres, was traced following the anatomy of the many hills that make the pleasure of walking in the city exquisite and sweaty. Long stretches of the walls are still well preserved and visible today, especially on postcards. The original circuit of walls was fitted with seven access gates, six of which still exist and are recognizable, both for their layout and for the tenacious survival of part of the original Etruscan structures through the strippings and reworkings of the Roman and medieval periods.

Between the 13th and 14th centuries, on the pretext of the city’s expansion, the ancient walls and some of the gates were stripped and in part absorbed into new buildings. Some sections were completely dismantled and, nearby, one would often hear whistling in an entirely casual manner. One of the observances most keenly felt by the inhabitants of Perugia was for a long time the so-called sassaiola, or battle of stones, and I’ll add nothing more.
A new circuit of walls was erected, with a perimeter of about six kilometres, which, besides its defensive purpose, also served to contain the city’s landslide-prone terrain, morphologically marked by rises and hollows. The relevant gates took their names from the corresponding inner ones with which they aligned. The ‘posterns’ were also built, secondary gates placed behind the main ones at recesses in the walls, conceived to allow pedestrian passage at the steepest points. To this construction also date the Libitine gates, or ‘gates of the dead’, so called in homage to Libitina, ancient goddess of funerals with her suggestive name: their doorway stood at a height equal to that of a cart’s bed, to ease the passing.
In accordance with an ancient Etruscan law that provided for three main entrances along the circuits of walls, and in view of the clover-shaped Etruscan plan that explains why the feast of Saint Patrick is so keenly felt in Perugia – and consequently why so many foreigners on 17 March will celebrate the Unification of Italy in the colours of Padania – one can identify the three principal Etruscan entrances in the Etruscan arch known as that of Augustus to the north, Porta Marzia to the south and Porta Trasimena to the west. The other Etruscan gates still in existence are the Arco dei Gigli, or dei Montesperelli, the Arco della Mandorla, or Porta Eburnea, and Porta Cornea, or Bernarda, or dei Cormitoli, also called the Arco di Sant’Ercolano.
Originally, the Porta Santa Susanna was represented by a bear on a turquoise field. The colour optimistically alluded to the waters of Lake Trasimeno, in whose direction the gate opened, while the bear probably alluded to a bear. The name of the district, Santa Susanna, outlived a very ancient church that stood near the present-day San Francesco al Prato.
In the medieval period the semicircular arch – round – of the gate was modified into an acute one – ogival – and some of the decorations were removed, later used to invent the ciaramicola. On the outer facade, the western one, a lion remains, which in the Middle Ages represented the resurrection because, according to the better-informed bestiaries, when lion cubs are born they lie as if dead for three days, and life enters them only when the father breathes on their muzzle. The lion was also a Guelph symbol, as well as an attribute of Saints Jerome, Adrian, Euphemia and Thecla, of the goddess Cybele, of the personification of Asia, of Pride and of Wrath.
The medieval bestiaries also told of bear cubs – revealing some negligible limits in matters of zoology – which were born formless and were shaped by the mother licking them. For the Church this became a meagre symbol of the conversion of the pagans to Christianity. The animal is an attribute of Saint Euphemia, who must have been something between Snow White and a wild-beast tamer, and of the personification of Gluttony. Two she-bears attacked the children who had mocked the famous Elisha. The nymph Callisto was turned into a she-bear by Diana.
The Porta Trasimena was also known as Porta Senese, della Luna, and di San Luca, after the nearby church of San Luca Evangelista.
On the top of the arch is carved a Sagittarius with a half-moon, which the medieval bestiaries also identify as a lasca, a fish typical of Lake Trasimeno.
The Porta Sant’Andrea, which takes its name from the parish church of the same name situated to its left, rises beside a very ancient church dedicated to Saint Mustiola, whose entrance arch was walled up next to the door of the room for the toll guard. Around the middle of the 15th century, the church of Santa Mustiola became the seat of the Confraternity of Sant’Andrea, later called of Justice. In 1552 the building was ceded, in order to allow the erection of the monastery of the Capuchin nuns of Santa Chiara, also called the Rinserrate of Santa Mustiola.

Having padded things out, it is interesting to note that, since the medieval gates were named according to the districts they led into, the Porta Sant’Andrea is also the gate of Santa Susanna, while the older one is by now known only as Porta Trasimena.
Saint Susanna was a young Roman martyr of the 4th century. She seems to have been a relative both of the emperor Diocletian and of Pope Caius. Having refused to marry the emperor’s son, Pierdiocleziano, she was condemned to death and beheaded in her own home.
Traditionally Saint Susanna is depicted with joined hands and her gaze turned to heaven, or holding a palm and an ear of grain. The joined hands represent devotion and prayer, but they are also one of the attributes of Innocence. The palm was originally the emblem of military victories, carried in the triumphal processions of the Romans. It was adopted by the Church as a symbol of Christ’s victory over death. In profane themes Victory hands the victors a palm branch, which is also an attribute of Fame. The palm is also an attribute of medieval Chastity and of the personification of Asia. In the iconography of the saints it appears as a generic symbol of the martyrs, so as to complicate their identification. A group of children holding palm branches represents the Holy Innocents. Felicity and her seven sons, too, hold palm branches, while a palm tree forms the wayfarer’s staff of Saint Christopher. A sober loincloth made of palm leaves is characteristic of the hermits in the desert, in particular Saint Paul and Saint Onuphrius. A palm branch is among the attributes of the Immaculate Conception, and another is handed to the Virgin by the angel who announces to her the approach of death. Not at all superstitious, she recycles the gift by passing it on to Saint John the Evangelist, of whom it becomes an attribute. During the Flight into Egypt, Joseph gathers dates from the palm under which the Holy Family rests, while the crowd that meets Jesus at his entry into Jerusalem waves palm branches, like a subliminal message.
Ceres, ancient goddess of the harvest, appears crowned with ears of grain and sometimes holds a sheaf of them, like Summer and Abundance. In religious iconography the ear of grain often appears with wine as a Eucharistic symbol. The ear of grain is often an attribute of martyrs, perhaps owing to a typo.
Observing the registers of the Nobile Collegio del Cambio during the frequent occasions on which they are shown to the public, one might wonder who the two men are who are often depicted in the act of molesting Saint Susanna.
The Apocrypha of the Old Testament tell the story of Susanna and the Elders, whose symbolism has migrated into the iconographic corpus of the holy martyr.
Susanna was a legendary heroine who triumphed over the perverse wickedness of certain men. The affair took place in Babylon. The wife of a wealthy Jew, the young woman was the object of desire of two elders of the community, a rich landowner and his faithful bearer of news, who together devised a scheme to seduce her. She was accustomed to bathe in her own garden, and there the two men laid an ambush for her: when the maidservants had left her alone, they leapt out of their hiding place and, being excused by their own charm from the need to pay in order to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, they threatened her that, if she did not yield to them, they would swear they had caught her in flagrant adultery with a young man, a fault then punished by death. Susanna rejected them with scorn, and the two old men, angered, carried out their threat: Susanna was dragged before the court on the false charge, summarily judged guilty thanks to the political and financial weight of her accusers, and condemned to death. When all seemed lost, the young Daniel stepped forward and questioned the two accusers, resorting to the expedient of hearing them separately, and obtained from them contradictory testimonies that proved the young woman’s innocence. The Old Testament, usually lavish in supplying the gruesome details bound up with penalties and punishments, is silent about the fate of the two elders, just like the medieval bestiaries.
In Hebrew, the name Susanna means lily, which is the flower of purity. The episode appears in ancient catacomb art, perhaps as an example, for the persecuted, of the deliverance of the just from evil. In the Middle Ages, Susanna became a symbol of the Church threatened by the pagans; the artists of the time favoured the theme of Daniel re-establishing justice, while from the Renaissance onward preferences went to the subject of Susanna at her bath, which offered an occasion to depict the female nude.

Antonio Senatore is a writer and art critic. He has collaborated with magazines and museum institutions both in Italy and abroad. He currently works within the circuit of Perugia’s civic museums and teaches History of Design at the NID – Nuovo Istituto di Design.