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The gate possessed considerable importance owing to its proximity to the Holy Spring,^[303] which, with its healing waters and shrines, its cypress groves, meadows, and delightful air, formed one of the most popular resorts in the neighbourhood of the city.^[304] There the emperors had a palace and hunting park, to which they often retired for recreation, especially in the spring of the year. On the Festival of the Ascension the emperor visited the “Life-giving Pegè” in state, sometimes riding thither through the city, at other times proceeding in his barge as far as the Marmora extremity of the walls, and then mounting horse for the rest of the way.^[305] But in either case, the Imperial cortége came up to this gate, and was received there by the body of household troops called the Numeri. It was on returning from such a visit to the Pegè that the Emperor Nicephorus Phocas was mobbed and stoned, as he rode from the Forum of Constantine to the Great Palace beside the Hippodrome.^[306]

The gate is memorable in history as the entrance through which, in 1261, Alexius Strategopoulos, the general of Michael Palæologus, penetrated into the city,^[307] and brought the ill-starred Latin Empire of Constantinople to an end. For greater security the Latins had built up the entrance; but a band of the assailants, aided by friends within the fortifications, climbed over the walls, killed the drowsy guards, broke down the barricade, and flung the gates open for the restoration of the Greek power. By this gate, in 1376, Andronicus entered, after besieging the city for thirty-two days, and usurped the throne of his father, John VI. Palæologus.^[308] In the siege of 1422 Sultan Murad pitched his tent within the grounds of the Church of the Pegè;^[309] while during the siege of 1453 a battery of three guns played against the walls in the vicinity of this entrance.^[310]