within there are very large rooms for the soldiers of the guard, with other accommodations and conveniences.
On the inner front of the gate, or that turned towards the city, San Michele constructed a magnificent Loggia of the Doric order, and with rustic masonry on the outer side, but within after the rustic manner wholly, with very large piers having columns, which serve as their decoration, and which on the external side are round, but squared on the interior; they are formed in separate pieces of rustic masonry without bases, and have Doric capitals; at the summit is a Doric cornice finely carved, and this passes along the entire length of the Loggia (which is a very long one), both within and without.
At a word, this gate is a most admirable production, and well spoke the illustrious Signor Sforza Pallavicini, Captain General of the Venetian armies, when he affirmed that there was no fabric to be found in Europe which merited to be in any manner compared with this. But it was the last marvel performed by Michele San Michele, for he had only just completed the first range of columns above-described when he finished the course of his life. The gate was left incomplete, therefore, nor will it now very probably be ever completed, since there are not wanting envious persons who censure various parts thereof (as invariably happens in the case of all great works), labouring to diminish the glory of others by their malignity and evil-speaking, although they have not themselves the genius to produce any thing that can bear a comparison with the performance which they are attempting to depreciate and decry.
The same architect erected another gate in Verona called San Zeno, and this also is very beautiful; in any other place than Verona it would indeed be accounted most wonderful, but in that city its beauties are obscured by those of the two before-mentioned. The Bastion near this gate is also a work of San Michele, as is that which is somewhat lower down, opposite to San Bernardino that is to say, with one between them called Dell’ Acquajo, which is opposite to the
seen a model only of this gate, one too which San Michele did not put into execution. It is indeed manifest that the architect did not intend the structure to serve as a gate and as a platform for artillery at the same time, nor had he the purpose of placing a pediment over the Doric cornice.
