A Pleasant Pistoia Morning

Our house on the hill

July 13: Cindy and I had already determined that, given the 90-degree-plus predictions, it might be best for us to confine our explorations to mornings and evenings.

The first good news that day was that the sky was cloudy, and it looked as if that would be the pattern at least for the morning.

The second good news that morning was that Cindy's sister Terrie was at the Frankfurt Airport and on her way to join us. Because we knew she wouldn't arrive until early afternoon, we decided we would go into town to explore and try to meet Terrie's train when she arrived.

We had breakfast on the patio...

...and then set off on the walk to the bus stop. This is at the beginning of the short drive to the house--and the beginning of the longer walk down to the road:

It was a pleasant walk past some of Gianna's olive trees.

We encountered a friendly resident:

And a shrine that must have been protecting the vineyard:

Caught the bus, and found the bus stop where we had futilely waited the day before. Already we felt more like we could navigate this town.

Pistoia, by the way, is about 19 miles northwest of Florence, and it's a well preserved medieval city that had been a settlement well before becoming a Roman colony in the 6th century BCE. In the 12th century it erected walls and declared itself a free commune (a certain level of government administration in Italy). Pistoia has a rich history that is still evident everywhere. We were excited to explore.

Two major annual events that are integral to the city's history are its Pistoia Blues festival, held in mid-July since 1980 (very new, historically speaking, but very important), and the Joust of the Bear, a ceremony dating back to 1300. Communes come from around the region to combat a bear (the bear isn't real, at least not these days). The original ritual was held from 1300 to 1666, then abandoned until 1947 (maybe they had run out of bears back in 1666). It's held every July 25th. We managed, sort of to our relief, to be in Pistoia smack between the two events.

After getting off the bus, we began our tour at the Church of San Francesco, which we had seen the day before. Apparently the church's facade was never completed, but that seemed just fine; it didn't take away from its impressiveness.

What a change from the churches we had been seeing in those northern cities! This Church of San Francesco had a much simpler beauty, befitting the less urban setting.

There were beautiful frescoes, some fully restored and others mere fragments, depicting the history of St. Francis:

The ceiling was unlike any we had seen elsewhere, but it wasn't the last one like this that we would see while in Tuscany.

This window, sort of a new take on the traditional rose windows, told the story of St. Francis in Pistoia.

Other windows had their own stories and were quite stately, surrounded by amazing frescoes:

The organ occupied a niche to the side of the main and secondary altars, and the ceilings at the front were vaulted in a more usual style.

The altars with paintings along the sides were so beautiful and simple. Loved this early 17th c. Sanmarini Altar: God the Father, angels, St. Francis and Sant' Antonio, and Our Lady of Grace (late 15th c.)

And this Altar from the Rooster: Madonna with

Baby and Saints Francesco and Caterina D'Alessandria (Elisabetta Sirani, 1650)--loved that the artist was a woman.

We saw this fierce bee symbol (or similar versions) frequently.

There was also a beautiful cloistered courtyard:

Many more pictures, but we finally left our first Pistoia church and headed toward the main piazza -- and more churches.

Walking the streets:

We were looking for the Piazza del Duomo, which is the "official" center of the city. First we came to the smaller Piazza dello Spirito Santo:

That dome in the distance was our goal.

But first we stopped in at a church in this piazza, with the interesting name of Centro di ascolto cittadino Insieme (poor translation: Together City Listening Centre)--I'm just not at all sure what that means, but it was another beautiful space.

We found this Monument to Niccolò Forteguerri; perhaps he was a great listener. He was definitely powerful, related to Pope Pius II and designated a cardinal-nephew.

Walking on, with more awesome sights:

And finally we arrived at the Piazza del Duomo.

These stands were left from the Pistoia Blues, which had ended just a couple of days earlier. Workers were hard at work removing them, to make way for the Joust of the Bear, which was scheduled for just 12 days from now.

The banners here represent the communes, cities, and regions that would be participating in the Joust.

Here Cindy approaches the San Giovanni in Corte Baptistry, at one side of the piazza:

And inside a very impressive baptismal font and a soaring domed ceiling:

It's difficult to imagine the stonework that went into this dome.

And, of course, St. John:

Here's another of those bees I kept seeing:

The cathedral of San Zeno (the Duomo) and the bell tower:

A cathedral has stood on this site since perhaps the 5th century, but there have been many iterations due to destructive fires, earthquakes, and rebuildings.

The bichrome facades seen on a lot of these churches seems to have been a fashion in this region. In Pistoia the effect was achieved with white and green marbles. Really striking.

Having centered ourselves in downtown Pistoia, Cindy and I went in search of lunch. Somewhat surprisingly, it was sprinkling and promising the possibility of a real rain, so we looked for a cafe with covered outdoor seating, and we found a terrific place called Voronoi. The food was delicious, the view of the buildings that surrounded this tiny piazza was delightful, it did rain a bit, and there was even a whimsical statue adjacent:

By this time, I was checking my texts with Terrie frequently. Her flight from Frankfurt to Florence had been delayed considerably, and it was beginning to look as if we really couldn't manage to stay out in the heat long enough to meet Terrie at the train station.

After lunch we had two further goals for the day: find a place to purchase bus tickets and find another grocery store to add to what we had purchased the night before. Neither one of these goals seemed particularly easy. But we wandered, and in our wanderings found more interesting streets and buildings--and a gelato place, too. 🥳

This looked like a cistern, located on the Piazza della Sala:

Down one of these streets (or a similarly picturesque street) we found the gelato place:

At some point we passed the Ospedale del Ceppo, a medieval hospital founded in 1277. The frieze, executed from 1525 by Santi Buglioni, portrays the seven works of mercy, mixed with scenes of the Virtues.

Today the building serves as the seat of the Pistoia Medical Academy. That frieze is pretty wondrous.

Down this street we wandered...

...and found this church, San Giovanni Fuoricivitas:

Although heavily damaged by Allied bombing in WWII, it has been meticulously restored since the 1960s.

Here's the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility:

This is one of the streets where we thought we could get a taxi at a taxi stand. Nope. But I sure did love the juxtaposition of old and new statuary within a block of each other.

We were definitely flagging in the heat. Terrie was finally on her way, but we knew it was time for us to retreat from the heat. The good news is that we found a grocery store, and we found a place where we bought some bus tickets, and best of all, we found a taxi to take us back to the house.

And about two hours after that, Terrie showed up, having managed to find her way from the Florence Airport to Santa Maria Novella train station and into a taxi at the Pistoia train station. She did that much more smoothly than we had managed.

Wine was opened and consumed; Cindy cooked dinner and that was delicious; and we sat on the patio in the warm evening catching up.

A pretty great first day in Pistoia, I'd say.