Firenze	Prato	Pistoia	Lucca	Versilia
Pisa	Siena	Arezzo	Golf	Wellness

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Between the end of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Pistoia underwent a flourishing artistic season, when noble buildings, residences and churches were renovated and re-modernised in keeping with the new late Baroque and Rococo style, which was fashionable at the time in the Medici court in neighbouring Florence, the capital of the Grand duchy of Tuscany. Following the new trend, buildings and furnishings were renewed in Pistoia with pastel colours, frivolous decorations and frequently profane subjects and delicate white and gold stuccowork designed to reflect the sparkling torch-lights and mirrors in the elegant residences of Pistoia’s nobility.
Some traces of the splendour of these precious surroundings can still be seen in private buildings in Pistoia, for example in Palazzo Amati Cellesi, which is today the site of a bank institute, in Piazza Garibaldi, or Palazzo Marchetti, in via Curtatone and Montanara, and in various religious buildings, which are worth a visit to breathe in some of that atmosphere.
You are particularly advised to visit the Carmine church in the square of the same name, which has recently been restored and returned to its ancient splendour, and the small church of San Leone, which is today used to hold exhibitions, as well as the church of the Santissima Annunziata and, in particular, the church of Saints Prospero and Philip, a real eighteenth- century “theatre” with its liturgical representation that is completely painted inside with glimpses of sky in the background and hosts of saints looking down from soft clouds. From the main door in the little square, to the left of the ecclesiastical building, some steps leads to an incredibly beautiful area right above the church hall: this is the Capitolare Fabroniana Library, a place where time seems to have stopped and where the precious wood-panelling and bookshelves that surround the great reading hall, on two levels, house the rich collection of ancient manuscripts and books that were donated to the church in the first half of the eighteenth century by cardinal Carlo Agostino Fabroni from Pistoia, who did this to show his affection for his home town, in no way obscured by his brilliant career at the Roman curia.