Systems having symmetric transfer matrices often occur in applications. In this paper, digital control problems for continuous-time plants having symmetric transfer matrices are considered. The following results are obtained: 1) Symmetry of a transfer matrix of a continuous-time system is preserved through a discretization with generalized sample and hold functions under a mild assumption. 2) If a sampled-data H∞ control problem has a solution for a given sampled-data generalized plant composed of a continuous-time 4-port system having symmetric transfer matrix, an integral sampler, and a zero-order hold, then there exists a sampled-data H∞ controller having symmetric transfer matrix.