Description
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 is the coats of arms: shields in stone, marble, glazed terracotta and paint, left by the podestàs, the Florentine commissioners and the other magistrates who sat here. Many bear an inscription with the person's name and the years of their office.
In the courtyard, the walls of the loggia are painted with shields on arabesque backgrounds, some red, some blue. Over the large entrance arch two lions each hold a white shield with a red cross; on the opposite side the shields are held up by angels among the clouds.
Note the stone benches from the early 16th century: this is where the judges sat, because public trials were held in the courtyard, in full view of everyone.
Its medieval look, however, is largely 19th-century. Between 1842 and 1846, to a design by Giuseppe Faldi, the palace was enlarged by absorbing the neighbouring buildings, raised by a storey with mullioned windows and plastered to imitate stone.
It was a deliberate choice: at the height of the Risorgimento, the aim was to evoke the city's most glorious period. The painters who completed the coats of arms in the courtyard also added a few scenes devoted to Pistoia's golden ages.
Who designed it originally is unknown. It can't have been Andrea Pisano, to whom some have attributed it: he died in 1345, twenty-two years before anyone proposed building a palace for the podestà. More likely it was Cellino di Nese, from Siena, who in 1337 made the cenotaph of Messer Cino da Pistoia.
From 1816 the palace housed the collegial court and from 1838 the court of first instance. The great hall on the first floor is still the courtroom today.
The real spectacle is the coats of arms: shields in stone, marble, glazed terracotta and paint, left by the podestàs, the Florentine commissioners and the other magistrates who sat here. Many bear an inscription with the person's name and the years of their office.
In the courtyard, the walls of the loggia are painted with shields on arabesque backgrounds, some red, some blue. Over the large entrance arch two lions each hold a white shield with a red cross; on the opposite side the shields are held up by angels among the clouds.
Note the stone benches from the early 16th century: this is where the judges sat, because public trials were held in the courtyard, in full view of everyone.
Its medieval look, however, is largely 19th-century. Between 1842 and 1846, to a design by Giuseppe Faldi, the palace was enlarged by absorbing the neighbouring buildings, raised by a storey with mullioned windows and plastered to imitate stone.
It was a deliberate choice: at the height of the Risorgimento, the aim was to evoke the city's most glorious period. The painters who completed the coats of arms in the courtyard also added a few scenes devoted to Pistoia's golden ages.
Who designed it originally is unknown. It can't have been Andrea Pisano, to whom some have attributed it: he died in 1345, twenty-two years before anyone proposed building a palace for the podestà. More likely it was Cellino di Nese, from Siena, who in 1337 made the cenotaph of Messer Cino da Pistoia.
From 1816 the palace housed the collegial court and from 1838 the court of first instance. The great hall on the first floor is still the courtroom today.