Porta della Carta Site Features

The four Virtues

Prudence and Charity sit in canopied niches above, Temperance and Fortitude below, flanking the opening. The choice is pointed: these are the qualities the Republic expected of the office behind the door, set where every petitioner passed them on the way in.

The Foscari group

Above the cornice, Doge Francesco Foscari kneels before the Lion of St Mark. The doge is shown smaller than the lion and physically lower -- a deliberate statement that the office answered to the state rather than embodying it. Napoleon's forces destroyed the original in 1797 precisely because it read as a symbol of the old order; what stands there now is Luigi Ferrari's 19th-century recreation of the same composition.

The name

It was not called the Porta della Carta until the late 15th century -- earlier records call it the porta grande, the porta del bando, and the porta dorata. The "paper" of the current name most likely refers to the state archives and the scribes who worked at this corner writing petitions for people who could not.