Description
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 Pistoia in check than to defend them.
What you see is above all the whole: the sloping walls about 11 metres high, the gun ports in the flanks of the bastions, the slanted parapets and the large entrance in the middle of the curtain wall. No decoration at all: this is “soldierly” architecture, as Cosimo I's military style demanded.
Inside opens the parade ground. Above the Renaissance walls rises the medieval keep, the great tower that survived fairly intact from the earlier fortress, with a few traces of the other towers.
That older fortress had been built by the Florentines in 1331, near a chapel of Saint Barnabas, which gave it its first name. In 1343 the people of Pistoia destroyed it in reprisal. The name of Santa Barbara came only later.
In 1539 Cosimo I de' Medici had it rebuilt to a design by Nanni Unghero, with the works directed by Giovan Battista Bellucci. The aim was to curb the city's warlike ambitions. Later Bernardo Buontalenti enlarged the core and linked it to the walls with a new bastion.
With the arrival of firearms, tall towers became targets: tops were lowered and sharp corners removed. The fortress tower was spared and enlarged, losing only the corbels at the top, while the bell towers of San Paolo and San Pier Maggiore, which blocked the view over the city, were cut down.
In its whole history the fortress withstood only one siege, in 1643, when Barberini troops attacked Pistoia and were driven back.
Peter Leopold disarmed it in 1774; it then served as barracks, military prison and recruiting office. In 1944, within these walls, the Germans shot four young men from Pistoia.
The fortress is owned by the State and is one of Tuscany's state museums, run by the Direzione regionale Musei.
What you see is above all the whole: the sloping walls about 11 metres high, the gun ports in the flanks of the bastions, the slanted parapets and the large entrance in the middle of the curtain wall. No decoration at all: this is “soldierly” architecture, as Cosimo I's military style demanded.
Inside opens the parade ground. Above the Renaissance walls rises the medieval keep, the great tower that survived fairly intact from the earlier fortress, with a few traces of the other towers.
That older fortress had been built by the Florentines in 1331, near a chapel of Saint Barnabas, which gave it its first name. In 1343 the people of Pistoia destroyed it in reprisal. The name of Santa Barbara came only later.
In 1539 Cosimo I de' Medici had it rebuilt to a design by Nanni Unghero, with the works directed by Giovan Battista Bellucci. The aim was to curb the city's warlike ambitions. Later Bernardo Buontalenti enlarged the core and linked it to the walls with a new bastion.
With the arrival of firearms, tall towers became targets: tops were lowered and sharp corners removed. The fortress tower was spared and enlarged, losing only the corbels at the top, while the bell towers of San Paolo and San Pier Maggiore, which blocked the view over the city, were cut down.
In its whole history the fortress withstood only one siege, in 1643, when Barberini troops attacked Pistoia and were driven back.
Peter Leopold disarmed it in 1774; it then served as barracks, military prison and recruiting office. In 1944, within these walls, the Germans shot four young men from Pistoia.
The fortress is owned by the State and is one of Tuscany's state museums, run by the Direzione regionale Musei.