in Architecture, a large door, leading or giving entrance into a city, town, castle, palace, or other considerable building. See ARCHITECTURE.

Thebes, in Egypt, was anciently known by the appellation with a hundred gates. In ancient Rome there was a triumphal gate, porta triumphalis. In modern Rome there is the jubilee gate, which is only opened in the year of a grand jubilee.

The gates of London were many of them converted into gaols or prisons, as Ludgate, Newgate, &c., but they are now removed. The lesser or by-gates are called posterns. Gates, through which coaches, &c., are to pass, should not be less than 7 feet broad, nor more than 12; the height to be 11½ the breadth.

or CAIT, in the manege, called in French train, is used for the going or pace of a horse.

in a military fence, is made of strong planks, with iron bars, to oppose an enemy. They are generally made in the middle of the curtain, from whence they are seen, and defended by the two flanks of the battions. They should be covered with a good ravelin, that they may not be seen or enfiladed by the enemy. These gates, belonging to a fortified place, are passages through the rampart, which may be shut and opened by means of doors and a portcullis. They are either private or public.

Private gates are those passages by which the troops can go out of the town unseen by the enemy, when they pass to and from the relief of the duty in the outworks, or from any other occasion which is to be concealed from the besiegers.

Public gates are those passages through the middle of such curtains, to which the great roads of public ways lead. The dimensions of these are usually about 13 or 14 feet high, and 9 or 10 feet wide, continued through the rampart, with proper recesses for foot passengers to stand in out of the way of wheel carriages.