Description
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 façade is unusual for a Tuscan public palace: along the ground floor runs a portico of five arches, built with four and finished with a fifth to even out the front. In the centre stands a large Medici coat of arms with bronze ornaments, in honour of Pope Clement VII.
The detail everyone notices is the black marble head to the left of the large central window, with a spiked mace and some keys hanging below it. Some say it's Grandonio de' Ghislieri, the semi-legendary hero of a 12th-century expedition to the Balearic Islands; others say it's the traitor Filippo Tedici, put on display as a warning, like the heads of the condemned.
The keys have a double story too: they're called "the Balearic keys", but they're more likely those of the city prisons, opened in 1399 during the penitential processions of the Bianchi.
Inside, the courtyard of the original core is home to the Miracolo, a work by the Pistoia-born sculptor Marino Marini. A 17th-century bridge also runs from the palace to the cathedral: the magistrates used it to reach the choir and follow the services without going down into the square.
The name Palazzo di Giano comes from Giano della Bella, podestà of Pistoia in the first half of 1294. But all that goes back to him are the first purchases of houses on the site: the main phase of construction dates from the second quarter of the 14th century.
In February 1339, to enlarge the palace, the city expropriated the neighbouring houses, which belonged to important families. The price was the average of the valuations of three separate commissions, and the whole procedure was wrapped up in just twenty-six days: a surprisingly brisk medieval bureaucracy.
The façade is unusual for a Tuscan public palace: along the ground floor runs a portico of five arches, built with four and finished with a fifth to even out the front. In the centre stands a large Medici coat of arms with bronze ornaments, in honour of Pope Clement VII.
The detail everyone notices is the black marble head to the left of the large central window, with a spiked mace and some keys hanging below it. Some say it's Grandonio de' Ghislieri, the semi-legendary hero of a 12th-century expedition to the Balearic Islands; others say it's the traitor Filippo Tedici, put on display as a warning, like the heads of the condemned.
The keys have a double story too: they're called "the Balearic keys", but they're more likely those of the city prisons, opened in 1399 during the penitential processions of the Bianchi.
Inside, the courtyard of the original core is home to the Miracolo, a work by the Pistoia-born sculptor Marino Marini. A 17th-century bridge also runs from the palace to the cathedral: the magistrates used it to reach the choir and follow the services without going down into the square.
The name Palazzo di Giano comes from Giano della Bella, podestà of Pistoia in the first half of 1294. But all that goes back to him are the first purchases of houses on the site: the main phase of construction dates from the second quarter of the 14th century.
In February 1339, to enlarge the palace, the city expropriated the neighbouring houses, which belonged to important families. The price was the average of the valuations of three separate commissions, and the whole procedure was wrapped up in just twenty-six days: a surprisingly brisk medieval bureaucracy.