The gate is 16th-century and replaced an earlier one on the same spot. It reads as a triumphal arch rather than a defensive gate, because by the time it was built it was not defending anything — it was announcing the city to whoever crossed the bridge.
It stands between the bridge and the Mezquita, so almost everyone passes through it without registering it. It is worth the thirty seconds it takes to stop and look back through it at the bridge.
Our tip
The view through the arch from the bridge side lines the gate up with the cathedral tower.
Puerta del Puente, photographed
