Uzeda gate (porta Uzeda)

Uzeda gate connects the two parts of the old Clerks’ seminary (the current seat of the Diocesan Museum and Chierici’s palace), it was built in 1695 by the Duke of Camastra and was dedicated to the Viceroy Paceco Uzeda who had promoted the city’s reconstruction after the earthquake in 1693.

It’s considered a symbol of the city, Uzeda gate is built in typical Catania baroque style, that is characterized to the alternation of lava stone and white marble for the decoration, stylistically similar to the nearby Chierici’s palace. Uzeda gate opens to the sea in the ancient city’s walls that are dedicated to the sixteenth-century Spanish king Charles V, it’s part of the “new” defensive gateways of Catania which were built after the lava flow of 1669 and the earthquake of 1693.

The entrance connects Piazza Duomo to the eighteenth century via Dusmet, also it’s called “via degli Archi della Marina” that flank it. From the bridge connecting it to the Diocesan Museum in the East and to the Chierici’s palace in the west, you can enjoy to picturesque landscape that reveals the baroque city and Mount Etna on one side and the arcs of Marina and the sea on the other side.