Porta Volta is a former

city gate A city gate is a gate which is, or was, set within a city wall. It is a type of fortified gateway. Uses City gates were traditionally built to provide a point of controlled access to and departure from a walled city for people, vehicles, goods ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

, part of the Spanish walls (16th century). Nowadays, the name "Porta Volta" is most commonly used to refer to the surrounding district ("

quartiere A (; plural: ) is a territorial subdivision of certain Italian towns. The word derives from (‘fourth’) and was thus properly used only for towns divided into four neighborhoods by the two main roads. It has been later used as a synonymous ...

"), part of the Zone 8 administrative division of the city. Porta Volta was built in 1860 to connect the city to the Monumentale cemetery. In the following decades it acquired a more important role as a consequence of the construction of

Milano Porta Garibaldi railway station Milano Porta Garibaldi is a major railway station in the Italian city of Milan, located just to the north of the neighbourhood known as ''Porta Garibaldi''. ''Porta Garibaldi'' is the city's main station for commuter traffic with 25 million pass ...

, which interrupted the road to

Como Como (, ; lmo, Còmm, label=Comasco dialect, Comasco , or ; lat, Novum Comum; rm, Com; french: Côme) is a city and ''comune'' in Lombardy, Italy. It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como. Its proximity to Lake Como and ...

through Porta Garibaldi. A new road to Como was built to replace the old one. This road was known informally as "Comasina", formally as "Via Carlo Farini". This road branched off from Via Ceresio at Piazzale Antonio Baiamonti, a road junction located immediately outside of Porta Volta. While the walls and the gates have been demolished, the

toll gate Toll Gate or Tollgate may refer to: * Toll gate, a barrier across a toll road or toll bridge that is lifted when the toll is paid Entertainment * "Tollgate" (Hale single) * ''The Toll-Gate'', a 1954 novel by Georgette Heyer * ''The Toll Gate'', ...

s (dating back to 1880) have remained. An important renewal plan for the Porta Volta district has been submitted in 2010 by Swiss architect

Jacques Herzog Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd.,
" Herzog & de Meuron. Retrieved on 11 October 2012. "Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. R ...

. As a part of the plan, Porta Volta will become a cultural centre, with a large library, the new headquarters of the Feltrinelli publishing house, and vast green areas.
Porta Volta, nasce il polo della cultura
' (in Italian)

Notes

{{coord, 45, 28, 55, N, 9, 10, 55, E, source:kolossus-itwiki, display=title Districts of Milan

See also

Notes