Pantheon degli Uomini Illustri

Very interesting place

Closed. Nice garden in front.

Between 1811 and 1814 the great area in front of the church of San Francesco was called piazza Napoleone or the Bonaparte forum. The maire of Pistoia, Francesco Tolomei, therefore supported the need to promote reorganization of the square, giving commission to engineer Antonio Gamberai and the painter Barlomeo Valiani to prepare the first interventions, but the work was immediately interrupted. The project was revised by Cosimo Rossi Melocchi, who in 1811 prepared the design of a large space in which the suggestions of neoclassicism inspired by French Enlightenment converged. Rossi Melocchi designed a plant characterized by a scenic staircase, which had the task of connecting the elliptical square of the church of San Francesco with the upper parterre, regularizing the backdrop towards the city walls with a triangular-shaped factory structure. The latter had to be made up of a long ashlar base, surmounted along its entire length by a triangular tympanum, with a central portico that gave access to the vaulted hemicycle dedicated to the memory of the illustrious Pistoiese men. The massive Doric columns, the frameless tympanum and the total nudity of the walls show an adherence to the themes of the revolutionary architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, making the Pantheon project a manifesto of the Enlightenment classicism in Tuscany. The works, begun in 1812, were interrupted in 1813, to be carried out in reduced and romantic forms, until the conclusion of the work, which took place in 1827. In the changed socio-political scenario of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the structure was transformed into a coffee-concert, which gathered considerable success among the citizens. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century the restaurant was closed and, left in disuse, was abandoned to itself. The Pietro Borgognoni Philharmonic Association, which has its headquarters in the adjoining rooms since 1813, has been working for years with initiatives and fundraisers aimed at removing this modern temple from the current degradation.