Fano is accessed from the monumental and evocative Arco d'Augusto. Always a symbol of the city of Fano, it was the main gateway to the city in Roman times. Built at the point where the Via Flaminia joins the decumanus maximus of the city, the suggestive Gate is one of the few monuments from the Roman era that have survived almost intact and still marks the symbolic entrance to the city today.
The Porta Augustea, more commonly called the Arch of Augustus, is one of the symbolic monuments of the city of Fano and still marks today, as in the ancient Colonia Julia Fanestris, the entrance to the city. Built by the emperor Caesar Octavian Augustus in 9 AD, located at the point where the ancient Via Flaminia entered the decumanus maximus, the monumental gate, made of travertine (limestone from Monte Nerone), is an arch with three arches of which the central one larger one under which carts, horses and large vehicles passed and on the sides two smaller arches intended for the passage of pedestrians. The keystone of the central arch was decorated with the representation of an animal bust that is no longer recognizable today. The basal body, still well preserved, supported a large attic with a Corinthian pseudo-portico, now lost, in which there were seven arched windows separated by eight semi-columns. In the upper part of the Arch, on the rear side, part of the vault of the tunnel that connected the two towers that flanked the Arch is still visible. In the 4th century AD the prefect of the emperor Constantine, Turcio Secondo Aproniano, restored the Augustan gate and had an epigraph added on the now disappeared attic, without however canceling the previous one by Caesar Octavian Augustus, which places the construction, together with the city walls, in full Augustan age.
