Porta Felice - Palermo

The gate stands at the eastern end of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele , near the Tyrrhenian Sea coast and is the counterpart of the Porta Nuova at the other end of the Corso.

The gate was named by the Spanish Viceroy Marcantonio Colonna after his wife Felice Orsini.

After the Corso was extended to the Tyrrhenian Sea in 1581, Viceroy Marcantonio Colonna commissioned the architect Mariano Smiriglio to build a city gate in 1582. When Colonna left Palermo in 1584, construction was stopped and not resumed until 1604. The sculpture was completed in 1637 and the two fountains at the bases of the towers were completed in 1642.

On either side of the pillars on the second floor are statues representing two female saints : Santa Ninfa and Santa Cristina. On top of the pillars are eagles with the coat of arms of Viceroy Colonna. The eagle is also a symbol of Palermo and the Habsburg monarchs.

During the Second World War, the northern tower of the gate was damaged in a bombing in 1943. The gate was subsequently restored.

Willem Vandenameele