Micklegate Bar was the most important of York's medieval gateways and the focus for grand civic events. The ruling monarch traditionally stops at Micklegate Bar to ask permission from the Lord Mayor to enter the city.

For many hundreds of years Micklegate Bar was also home to the severed heads of rebels and traitors, which were skewered on pikes and displayed above the gate. There they were pecked by crows and magpies - a suitable indignity. The last of the severed heads was removed in 1754. The Bar is now a museum.