The Gate was inaugurated in its current form on May 15, 1865, at the end of the fifty-year period of Habsburg domination in Belluno (1815-1866) but during the Risorgimento period, naming it after the poet-prophet of Italian Unity Dante Alighieri, as a patriotic symbol of the restored cultural unity of Italy, on the occasion of the six hundred years since the Poet's death, celebrated in many cities of the newly established Kingdom of Italy.
The Dante Gate faced at that time the new center of the nineteenth-century city, the Campitello – today’s Piazza dei Martiri – where commercial activities, the cafés of the new bourgeoisie, and the social theater were bustling, in addition to hosting the most attended fairs, markets, military parades, band concerts, and public events. The bust of the Poet was commissioned from the sculptor of Ceneda Luigi Borro (1826-1880) thanks to the advice of the painter Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866) and the art enthusiast Osvaldo Monti (1819-1903), both from Belluno, and placed as an ornament of the seventeenth-century city gate. Originally the gate had been opened in the city wall in 1669 during the rule of the Republic of Venice, by rector Daniele Renier from whom it took its name and whose stone coat of arms is still present on the front of the gate facing Piazza dei Martiri, replacing an ancient pusterla, that is, a service opening, in the section of the ancient walls between Porta Dojona and the castle, called Ussolo, meaning little gate.
