Who we are
The Company of the 13 Gates was born in Bologna as a group of soldiers reenacting the period and the historical stories of the city among 1380-1410 characterized from the economic recovery and to the return to a form of city state.
The group, has as its purpose the development of a highly detailed reenacting activity, based on documentary sources mainly of textual or iconographic kind or valid bibliographies according to the referenced period.
The research, starting from the mainly military aspects, expands to the exploration of everyday life: food, clothes, society, habits and customs, fashion, religion basing on that historiographical trend aimed at regain a prospective “from the bottom”.
This reenacting job has brought the members of the group to cooperate actively with institutions and cultural associations, to take part in filming documentaries and other high level efforts.
The extreme accuracy in historical reenacting and a genuine research activity are the foundations of all the association activities always aimed to enrich our offer.
Name and banner
The name of our Company was born from a strong historical and territorial vocation. Born in Bologna, it wanted to recall immediately a characteristic and enduring feature: the gates.
But how many gates there are in Bologna? How many they were in 1300? In a fascinating trip back in the past it is possible to discover that the city had given the start to the building of a thirteen gate at the end of Pratello street, yet in the XII century and that this gate remained open until 1445, year in which was walled to not let the Visconti get inside the city, never to be opened again. So from here comes the name Company of Thirteen Gates and our banner, instead, having to cover the Templar period as the one between 1380 and 1410, is made by a red cross in a white field. Such was the sign around which knights from Bologna gathered to leave for Holy Land e and such became then the banner of the city.
The members of the group
