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This is the recently renovated baroque first gate of the Habsburg fortress in the city of Alba Iulia (Latin: Apulum, Alba Iulia, Alba Carolina; German: Weißenburg, Karlsburg; Hungarian: Gyulafehérvár; Slavic: Balgrad, Belograd). The gate, designed to imitate a triumphal arch, is decorated with figures and motifs from ancient mythology and crowned with the Habsburg Austrian symbol, the double headed eagle adorned with a crown, a scepter and a sword.

During the Roman occupation, a new city emerges around the "castrum" (Roman fort), in the vicinity of the ancient Dacian settlement of Apulon, mentioned by the ancient Greek historian, Ptolemy. It became the one of the largest settlements in Roman Dacia, the capital of Dacia Apulensis district and the seat of the "XIII Gemina" Legion.

From the remains of the Roman city, a new settlement emerges, mentioned in documents in the 9th century as "Belgrad"/"Belograd", meaning "White Castle" in Slavic, following the tradition at the time of whitewashing the the outer walls enclosing a settlement. During the 10th century it becomes the seat of a local dukedom, ruled by a Hungarian nobleman by the name of Zsombor, who, upon being baptized in Constantinople as a Christian in 953, adopts the name of Gyula (Julius). Thus the city becomes known as Alba Iulia: "the white castle of Julius".

In the 1100s, the first king of Hungary, St. Stephen I (Szent István), unites the Magyar clans under his control and after his crowning and adopting of Catholicism, he sets about to create 10 dioceses in the kingdom of Hungary. After defeating Julius (Gyula), his alleged uncle, he establishes the Roman-Catholic diosese of Transylvania at Alba Iulia in 1009.

In 1541, the city becomes the capital of autonomous principality of Transylvania, until 1690. During the early 1600s, under the rule of Gabriel Bethlen, the city reaches the high point of its cultural history, a "second Renaissance", with the establishment of an academy, founding of new institutions and building of new palaces and defenses.

In the first half of the 1700s, during the reign of the Holy Roman emperor, Charles VI (Karl VI) of Habsburg, the building of a new fortress at Alba Iulia was commissioned. The star-shaped fortress with its 7 bastions, encompassing the city and its old defenses, was built between 1716 and 1735, according to the plans and under the supervision of Giovanni Morando Visconti, using the Vauban system. It is the largest of its kind in Southeastern Europe.

The city became known as Karlsburg or Alba Carolina: "the white castle of Karl". Most probably the intended translation would have been: "Karl's city of Alba", since its massive walls are not whitewashed, but rather the color of red brick. At the end of World War I, in 1918, this was the setting of the declaration of union of Transylvania with Romania. In 1922, the king of Romania, Ferdinand of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, was symbolically crowned in Alba Iulia.

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