Spada gate of Erice
The Porta Spata di Erice is one of the three access gates to the urban core of the city of Erice.
There is no historical information about the date of its construction. Its dating has been estimated, thanks to its megalithic structure, between the Norman age and the fourteenth century, a time of refortification and a great rebirth of the city. It is believed that the gate must have been of great importance for the urban fabric of the city, since it represented the most immediate access point to the Norman church of Sant'Antonio Abate and to the Jewish quarter. Given that the Jewish quarter was demolished at the end of the 15th century, it is assumed that the gate already existed before this period.
The gate, with a square plan, rises flush with the walls that bend to the north-west. forming a square tower on the right jamb, the largest within the entire city walls. The arch of the door, slightly acute, is made of small limestone blocks, while the room protrudes from the internal edge of the walls, double the height of the external opening and covered with a slightly lowered barrel vault in limestone blocks. At the internal corners of the room, two low pillars simulate two unfinished jambs.
Outside this door, during the long war of the Sicilian Vespers (1282-1302), they were killed by the sword , the Angevin soldiers taken prisoner and sentenced to death. The gate was named after those executions.
