Pistoia

Pistoia is one of Tuscany’s most agreeable surprises: a medieval city of green-and-white marble, a jewel-box cathedral square, and a dense grid of Romanesque churches — all largely spared the tour-bus circuit. Named Italian Capital of Culture in 2017, it hides its treasures in plain sight, an hour from Florence yet a world away in tempo.

Why visit

The city has everything travellers hope to find in Tuscany, minus the queues. Its cathedral square is a perfectly composed ensemble of cathedral, baptistery, bell tower and civic palazzi; its churches hold a Giovanni Pisano pulpit and fresco cycles; its hospitals, towers and underground rivers tell a thousand years of urban history. Pistoia’s self-styled nickname — the “city of enchanted stone” — refers to the silver-grey sheen its buildings take at dusk, and after a day of exploring you will understand it. Connoisseurs of Italian art come for the medieval sculpture; summer visitors come for the Pistoia Blues festival in July; and the mountains of the Pistoia Apennine rise within reach for hikers. For a day trip, Collodi lies nearby, and Montecatini Terme makes an easy pairing with the thermal era.

Character and history

Settlement here took root on the edge of the Apennine foothills along the ancient road between Florence and Lucca, and by the early Middle Ages Pistoia was an episcopal see with its own mint and ambitions. Medieval prosperity, built on wool and the mountain trade, paid for the extraordinary concentration of Romanesque and gothic churches that still defines the centre — Sant’Andrea, San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, San Bartolomeo and others — culminating in the marble-clad religious heart around the cathedral of San Zeno. Florence absorbed the city in the sixteenth century, and later centuries turned Pistoia toward industry and quiet scholarship. Its bishops’ palace, hospitals and charitable institutions produced a dense civic fabric — hence the extraordinary richness of its museums for so mid-sized a city. The ring of the first medieval walls still shapes the modern street plan, so the centre reads like a single continuous narrative.

What to see

The religious and civic heart is the Piazza del Duomo, where the Pistoia Cathedral (Saint Zeno) fronts the square together with the slender Bell Tower of Pistoia Cathedral and the octagonal, green-and-white marble Baptistery of San Giovanni in Corte. Inside the cathedral, the chapel of San Jacopo preserves its celebrated silver altar, one of the masterworks of Italian goldsmithery. Flanking the square, the Museum of the Ancient Bishops’ Palace occupies a palace documented as far back as 1091: its route spans from Etruscan art to the nineteenth century, with a tapestry of exceptional importance, a wooden angel attributed to Giovanni Pisano, and the Archaeological Route of the Ancient Bishops’ Palace Museum underground, where the site’s Roman and medieval layers are exposed and a rare early glass from the Syria-Palestinian region is displayed.

Pistoia’s museums continue throughout the centre. The Ospedale del Ceppo – Museum of the Ceppo Hospital documents the Renaissance hospital whose glazed terracotta frieze, associated with Giovanni della Robbia’s workshop, runs along its facade. The San Salvatore Museum and the Palazzo de’ Rossi – Twentieth Century Collections carry the story into the modern era, joined by the Museum of the Twentieth Century and Contemporary Art of Palazzo Fabroni. Sacred art gathers at the Rospigliosi Museum and the Diocesan Museum of Pistoia, which share a venue near the cathedral.

For atmosphere, nothing beats the churches: the Church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas with its striped marble facade, the Church of Sant’Andrea with its Giovanni Pisano pulpit, the frescoed Former Church of the Tau, and the Church of San Francesco (Pistoia) on its quiet square. Add the domed Basilica of the Madonna dell’Umiltà, the austere Church of San Leone, the early Church of San Jacopo in Castellare and the Oratory of San Desiderio. Below the streets, Underground Pistoia tours the buried river and medieval cellars; above them, the star-shaped Santa Barbara Fortress anchors the ramparts. Three artists’ homes complete the picture: the Fernando Melani House-Studio, the Sigfrido Bartolini House Museum and the Jorio Vivarelli Foundation.

How to experience

Take the underground tour first — it reorients everything you see afterwards. Then walk the churches in the morning when the light strikes the marble facades, and dedicate the afternoon to the cathedral square museums. On your way out of town, stop at the fortress for a walk around its ramparts. Visit in July for the Pistoia Blues festival on the piazza, or on 25 July for the Giostra dell’Orso, the medieval joust of the bear in honour of the city’s patron saint. Taste the local zuppa del carcerato and the almond confetti for which the city has long been known, and consider the Apennine excursions — the ski resorts and trekking trails above town are less than an hour away.

Practical planning

Pistoia sits on the main railway line between Florence and Lucca, with regional trains from Florence taking around forty minutes; the station is a flat ten-minute walk from the Piazza del Duomo. Drivers should use the car parks ringed outside the ZTL and enter the centre on foot. The historic centre is compact and mostly flat, walkable end to end in twenty minutes, though cobbles argue for sturdy shoes. Museums cluster around the cathedral square, but several — San Salvatore, the Fabroni, the artists’ houses — sit on the perimeter, so allow a second morning if you want them all. Opening days vary by season and many museums close Mondays; confirm times on the official tourism and museum sites before setting out. A full day covers the essentials; two days let you add the underground route and the fortress at leisure.

Nearby places

• Collodi — the hillside village of Pinocchio fame with its historic garden, a short drive east.
• Montecatini Terme — the great Liberty-era thermal spa town to the west.