The Cathedral of San Zeno is the duomo of Pistoia, on Piazza del Duomo, next to the bell tower and the baptistery. Outside it has a Romanesque facade with a portico of little loggias and the blue vault by Andrea della Robbia. Inside it holds one...
The Ospedale del Ceppo is Pistoia's old hospital, a stone's throw from Piazza del Duomo, founded in the 13th century and in use until 2013. You'll recognise it at once: a long frieze of bright, glossy coloured terracotta runs above its...
The church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas is one of Pistoia's great Romanesque monuments, in the old town. Its facade is on the side: the long flank, in white and green stripes, is the one you see and the one that has always served as the main...
Piazza del Duomo is the heart of Pistoia: a large pedestrian rectangle where the cathedral, the bell tower, the baptistery and the palaces of the bishop, the city council and the courts stand side by side. Within a few dozen metres lies the whole...
The Torre del Campanile is the bell tower of Pistoia Cathedral: it stands apart from the church, beside the left side of the façade, on Piazza del Duomo. Almost 67 metres tall to the tip of its cross, it is the landmark of the whole...
The Baptistery of San Giovanni in Corte is the Gothic octagon striped in white and green marble that stands on Piazza del Duomo, opposite Pistoia Cathedral. About 40 metres tall, it is counted among the masterpieces of Tuscan Gothic, because...
The Church of Sant'Andrea is an ancient Romanesque parish church in the historic centre of Pistoia, narrow and very tall, with a façade banded in white and green marble. Inside it keeps the reason so many people come all this way: the pulpit...
The Musei di Palazzo Rospigliosi fill the Rospigliosi family palace on Via Ripa del Sale, in the centre of Pistoia. Under one roof there are three visits: the 17th-century apartment known as “Pope Clement IX's”, the Diocesan Museum of sacred art...
The Museo Civico di Pistoia is the city's main art museum, housed in the Palazzo degli Anziani, the 14th-century town hall on Piazza del Duomo. Seven centuries of painting, from the 13th to the 19th century, tell the story of Pistoia and its...
Pistoia Sotterranea is a route beneath the centre of Pistoia, entered from the old Ospedale del Ceppo. You walk along the former bed of a stream, among arches and walls that show how the city grew, layer upon layer, from the Renaissance...
The Ex Chiesa del Tau is the old church of Sant'Antonio Abate, in the centre of Pistoia: a 14th-century building, now deconsecrated, that hides one of the city's great fresco cycles. Next door is the convent, home to the Museo Marino...
The Church of San Bartolomeo in Pantano is one of the oldest churches in Pistoia: founded as a Lombard abbey in the 8th century, it still has its 12th-century Romanesque look, with a five-arched façade and a bare stone interior. Inside it keeps a...
The Basilica of Madonna dell'Umiltà is Pistoia's Marian sanctuary, in Renaissance style, and from outside you recognize it at once by the great dome that rises over the city's rooftops. It was built to house a fresco of the Madonna believed to be...
The Museo Marino Marini is the museum Pistoia devotes to its most famous 20th-century sculptor, in the Palazzo del Tau, the old 14th-century convent of Sant'Antonio Abate, right in the centre. Sculptures, drawings, prints and paintings trace his...
The Church of San Paolo is an ancient church in the centre of Pistoia, founded in the 10th century and rebuilt from the 12th: outside it has the forms of Tuscan Gothic, inside a single, austere and bare nave. It makes for a short stop, with a few...
The Palazzo dei Vescovi is the old residence of the bishops of Pistoia, on Piazza del Duomo, next to the cathedral: an 11th-century palace with a large Gothic brick loggia. Today it's a museum running from the Etruscans to the 19th century,...
The Fortezza di Santa Barbara is Pistoia's great Medici fortress, at the south-east corner of the city walls: a brick quadrilateral with bastions at the corners, sloping walls and a parade ground inside. It was built more to keep the people of...
The Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a small Renaissance church in Pistoia, next to the old Ospedale del Ceppo, born of a miracle in a hospital ward. Locals call it the “Madonna del Letto”, the Madonna of the Bed, because the bed of the...
Palazzo Panciatichi, which locals call the Palazzo del Balì, is the only medieval private palace left in Pistoia, on the corner of Via Cavour and Via Panciatichi. A three-storey block of stone on massive arches, it was born in the 14th century as...
Palazzo Fabroni is Pistoia's museum of contemporary art, in a noble palace opposite the parish church of Sant'Andrea. It has a permanent collection born from the donations of the artists who have exhibited here, from Arte Povera to Minimal Art,...
Piazza della Sala is Pistoia's market square, a stone's throw from Piazza del Duomo: fruit and vegetable stalls, shops all around and, in the middle, a marble well with a little lion on top.
The name is very old. In Lombard times this was...
The Pozzo del Leoncino is the marble well in the middle of Piazza della Sala, Pistoia's market square: a round parapet, two columns, a lintel and, on top, a small stone lion that gives the whole thing its name.
The thing to look at above...
The Palazzo degli Anziani, which locals also call the Palazzo di Giano, is Pistoia's town hall: it looks onto Piazza del Duomo, was built between the 13th and 14th centuries, and still houses the city council and the Museo Civico.
The...
The Chiesa dello Spirito Santo, founded as the Jesuit church of Pistoia and dedicated to Saint Ignatius, is the great Baroque church of the town centre: a bare, stern façade outside, and inside an altar by Bernini and a canvas by Pietro da...
The Chiesa della Santissima Annunziata is the great church of the Servants of Mary in Pistoia, on Piazza dei Servi: a 14th-century hall 47 metres long, clad in 18th-century gilded stucco, with a cloister of twenty-six frescoed lunettes beside...
The Church and Convent of San Domenico is Pistoia's great Dominican complex: a church with a single wide nave and a transept, full of tombs and altars of noble families, with two frescoed cloisters and works from the 14th to the 17th...
The Church of San Francesco is Pistoia's great Franciscan church, on the square that bears its name. Outside it has a facade in white and green bands, simple as the friars' style demands; inside, in the main chapel, it hides a cycle of...
The Palazzo Pretorio is Pistoia's courthouse, on Piazza del Duomo: justice has been administered here since the Middle Ages, and the façade and courtyard are covered with the coats of arms of those who administered it.
The real spectacle...
Villa Puccini di Scornio, which locals call "il villone", the big villa, is the 18th-century villa of the Puccini family just outside Pistoia, at Scornio: a Neoclassical palace with a colonnaded loggia, frescoed halls and, all around, a...
The Walls of Pistoia are the three rings that, over the Middle Ages, first enclosed and then enlarged the city: the oldest survives as traces in the layout of the streets, the last, from the 14th century, in several stretches along the avenues...
The Casa-studio Fernando Melani, on Corso Gramsci in Pistoia, is the house where this self-taught artist lived and worked from 1945 to 1985: a place left just as it was, where home, workshop and work of art are one and the same.
Inside,...
The Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo is a medieval stone palace between Via Roma and Via di Stracceria, next to Piazza del Duomo, in the center of Pistoia: it was the seat of the magistrate elected by the people, opened in 1282.
On the...
The Church of Santi Prospero e Filippo is a church in the center of Pistoia linked to the Oratorians of Saint Philip Neri: it holds fine canvases on its altars and a dome frescoed in the 18th century.
Among the altar paintings, the...
The Fondazione Pistoiese Jorio Vivarelli is housed in the sculptor's home and studio, on Via di Felceti, in the hills near Pistoia: a 20th-century villa surrounded by a park with his bronze sculptures, a place to get to know the artist's...
The Torre di Catilina is a stone tower about 30 meters tall overlooking Piazza del Duomo, the heart of Pistoia: one of the towers that give the medieval city its character, with a name that points to a Roman legend.
It dates from the 9th...
The Palazzo della Cassa di Risparmio is the historic seat of Pistoia's savings bank, on Via San Matteo in the town center: a Neo-Renaissance palace built between 1898 and 1905 on the model of Florence's Palazzo Strozzi, with an Art Nouveau...
The Teatro Manzoni is Pistoia's Italian-style theater, on Corso Gramsci: a hall with tiers of boxes, opened in 1694, with more than three centuries of history and still at the heart of the city's theater life.
The hall, with about 836...
Santa Maria a Ripalta is a small Romanesque church in Pistoia, on the old road that left the city toward Bologna and Modena: it keeps frescoes from the 13th and 14th centuries, and today it is used by the Russian Orthodox community.
The...
The Convento di San Benedetto, on Piazza Monte Oliveto in Pistoia, is an Olivetan monastery founded in 1380 near the western walls, with its single-nave church: here, in 1786, the famous Synod of Pistoia was held.
The church is fronted by...
The Biblioteca Forteguerriana is Pistoia's historic library, on Piazza della Sapienza: it grew out of the school founded in 1473 thanks to a bequest from Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri, and it holds more than a thousand manuscripts and 126...