Porte des Gaules

The Roman wall of Fréjus (listed as a Historic Monument in 1886) was built in small sandstone blocks from the Esterel Massif. It was pierced by 4 gates, at each end of the two main axes of the Roman city: the Decumanus Maximus and the Cardo Maximus,

The best preserved today is the Porte des Gaules, to the west. It is a contemporary name, the gate leading to Gaul. The gates took the name, in antiquity, either of the nearest city, in this case it was Aquae Sextiae, Aix en Provence, or the name of the Roman road that passed underneath, the Via Aurélia.

This gate is considered to be the largest Roman gate in France.

A paved road coming out of the carriage gate but located at a lower level, has not been precisely dated. It was in 1919 that J. Formigé found under the level of the gate a "paving with parts worn by the wheels of vehicles". Still visible today, it is indeed a vestige of the Via Aurelia, which linked Rome to Gaul and which crossed Fréjus. First called the Via Julia Augusta under the Emperor Augustus in 13 BC, this road took the name of Via Aurelia under the Emperor Aurelian (270 – 275).

This monumental gate formed a vast hemicycle 50 metres in diameter, with two round towers at the ends and a 5,95 m wide (20 feet) cart gate in the centre, flanked by two posterns. Another tower, partly destroyed and integrated into the masonry of the hemicycle, still exists to the left of one of the posterns. This could be the remains of a previous state where two towers flanked the gate, like the Porte d'Auguste in Arles.

As in Fréjus, from the Augustan era, the urban gates built in certain enclosures have entrances with three arcaded "fornices", for example in Rome, the Porta Esquilina.

The Agricola square, above the gate, was leveled in 1842, protected by parapets on the side of the Porte des Gaules. The gate was closed and the rampart served as a buttress wall, which explains its good state of preservation.

This gate regained its passage function after the revolution and lost it after the raising of the square.