[2][3][4] It is thought that a gate at Aldgate spanned the road to Colchester in the Roman period, when London Wall was constructed.

The gateway – which probably had two circular towers – stood at the corner of the modern Duke's Place, on the east side of the city, with a busy thoroughfare passing through it.

Firstly during the Great Rising in the summer of 1381 when thousands of insurgents from the surrounding region, assisted by sympathisers within and without, entered the City through Aldgate, unopposed.

[7][6] While he was a customs official, from 1374 until 1386 - including the period of the Great Rising, Geoffrey Chaucer occupied apartments above the gate,[4] where he wrote some of his poems.

A 1585 sketch of Aldgate's north tower reveals an interior room of approximately 16 by 14 foot (4.9 by 4.3 m); its southern sibling probably had similar dimensions.

[6] In his Survey of London (1598), John Stow wrote that Aldgate "hath had two pair of gates, though now but one; the hooks remaineth yet.

Due to the road geography, and its historic interest, the Aldgate Pump, a few metres inside the position of the former gate is also usually included.

The church of St Botolph's Aldgate stands just outside the position of the former gate, and was in place by 1115, though some traditions suggest an earlier origin.

[12] During the late 16th-century, an immigrant from Antwerp named Jacob Jansen (d. 1593) established a pottery producing English Delftware at Aldgate.

This led to parts of Aldgate being protected in the Whitechapel High Street Conservation Area and there are numerous listed buildings.

Notable sculptures in Aldgate are the bronze abstract "Ridirich" (1980) by Keith McCarter in the Square between Little Somerset Street and the bus garage on Aldgate High Street; "Sanctuary" (1985) outside the church of St Botolph without Aldgate made of fibreglass by Naomi Blake; "Column" (1995) cast in bronze by Richard Perry marking the entrance to Petticoat Lane Market at the southern end of Middlesex Street; and six hurtling bronze horses (2015) by Hamish Mackie in the piazza at Goodman's Fields.

"The Minories Eagle", hailed by experts as one of the rarest and finest artefacts ever unearthed in Britain would have stood in a niche in a mausoleum above the tomb of a very powerful and wealthy man.

The Augustinians priory of Holy Trinity Aldgate was founded by Matilda, the wife of King Henry I, in 1108, on ground just inside the gate.

Jews were welcomed back by Oliver Cromwell, and once again they settled in the area, founding London's oldest synagogue at Bevis Marks in 1698.

[14] On 10 April 1992 the Provisional IRA detonated a bomb close to the Baltic Exchange, severely damaging the historic building and neighbouring structures.

John Cass's school, where a plaque records the former course of London Wall, is sited on the north side of Aldgate (the street).