Description
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 surprise inside.
Outside, the eye goes to the polychrome frieze crowning the austere façade and the wrought-iron grilles by Pistoia's Michelucci workshop, which also made the great skylight over the courtyard. Inside, the rooms have frescoes by Galileo Chini: putti with laurel garlands, peacock feathers, ornamental panels.
It was Chini's first major mural cycle and one of the first Art Nouveau decorations in Italy; in the 1930s the Pistoia painter Luigi Mazzei completed it on his model. The palace was designed by the architect Tito Azzolini.
At the back, Giovanni Michelucci built the Borsa Merci, the commodity exchange, in 1949-1950, which the people of Pistoia called the "cricket cage." It was later demolished and rebuilt as an extension of the bank, opened in 1965 and joined to the old palace by a glass gallery.
Outside, the eye goes to the polychrome frieze crowning the austere façade and the wrought-iron grilles by Pistoia's Michelucci workshop, which also made the great skylight over the courtyard. Inside, the rooms have frescoes by Galileo Chini: putti with laurel garlands, peacock feathers, ornamental panels.
It was Chini's first major mural cycle and one of the first Art Nouveau decorations in Italy; in the 1930s the Pistoia painter Luigi Mazzei completed it on his model. The palace was designed by the architect Tito Azzolini.
At the back, Giovanni Michelucci built the Borsa Merci, the commodity exchange, in 1949-1950, which the people of Pistoia called the "cricket cage." It was later demolished and rebuilt as an extension of the bank, opened in 1965 and joined to the old palace by a glass gallery.