Travel Italy Around Florence About Rest Of The Pistoia Town
Travel Italy Around Florence About Rest Of The Pistoia Town
Behind the Palazzo Comunale, across Via Pacini, is San Bartolomeo in Pantano , or "St Bartholomew in the Swamp" (daily 8.30am-noon & 4-6pm), named for the marshy ground on which the church was raised in the eighth century, and with a rectangular pulpit sculpted in 1250 by Guido da Como. The
Ospedale del Ceppo , 100m north along Via Pacini, was embellished in the fifteenth century with a portico emblazoned with Giovanni della Robbia's startlingly colourful terracotta frieze of the
Theological Virtues and the Seven Works of Mercy , a panoply of Renaissance types and costume. A couple of minutes over to the west, the twelfth-century
Sant'Andrea (daily 8.30am-12.30pm & 3.30-7pm) has a corridor-slim aisle with a spectacular pulpit carved by Giovanni Pisano in 1297, showing scenes from the life of Christ and the Last Judgement.
Barely 100m south of the baptistry, Via Cavour is now the main street of the city's inner core, but was once the settlement's outer limit - as the name of the majestic
San Giovanni Fuorcivitas ("outside the walls") proclaims. The church was founded in the eighth century, but rebuilt between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, when it received the dazzlingly striped green-and-white flank that serves as its facade. The interior (daily 8am-noon & 4-6.30pm), though lit only feebly by the slit windows, is just as remarkable for its pulpit, another of Pistoia's exquisite thirteenth-century trio, carved in 1270 by a pupil of Nicola Pisano.
Via Crispi leads due south to Piazza Garibaldi, where the Cappella del Tau (Mon-Sat 9am-2pm) preserves a chaos of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century frescoes. A couple of doors away, in the Palazzo del Tau, is the engaging
Centro Marino Marini (Tues-Sat 9am-1pm & 3-7pm, Sun 9am-12.30pm; €3.10, free on Sat afternoon; joint ticket with Museo Civico and Museo Diocesano €6.20), showing a selection of etchings, engravings, sculptures, drawings and watercolours by this important modern artist and Pistoia local.
A few kilometres east in the suburb of SANTOMATO , reachable by COPIT bus #19 (direction Tobbiana or Bagnolo), is the remarkable
Fattoria di Celle art centre, featuring an array of contemporary sculpture and installations set amidst a large area of parkland around a seventeenth-century villa, including constructions in steel and wire by Dennis Oppenheim, in polished green and white marble by Robert Morris, and in stone by Richard Serra. The centre is open from April to September, by appointment only; contact them in advance (fax 0573.473.486) or on the day (tel 0573.479.907, calls taken 8.45-10am).
