The Sala, as it is commonly referred to in Pistoia,
is one of the city's oldest squares. lts name comes from the Lombard
word for the building where the public administration was located
and, in fact, this was the site of the viceroy's house during
Lombard rule. No trace of this prominent building has survived
today but the site's importance is recalled in the name of the
Baptistery (
vs34) )
which has always been referred in as in Corte because of its location
near the curtis domini regis. The street that linked the Sala
to the gate of Porta San Pietro (today the via di Stracceria and
the via della Torre) was called the via regis. With the construction
of the Palazzo degli Anziani (
vs10)
) in the Communal period the center of city life shifted back
to the piazza del Duomo
(vs3)and the Sala became the center for
free trade and commerce that it is today. A market, mostly selling
food products, evolved and artisans established their workshops
here. The memory of these different activities still survives
in the names of the nearby streets and squares: via del Cacio,
sdrucciolo dei Cipollini, via dei Fabbri, via degli Orafi (
vs6),via
del Lastrone (which takes its name from the large stone on which
fish was sold) and the piazza degli Ortaggi (which today hosts
the sculpture Giro del Sole by the Pistoian artist Roberto Barni).
Iin the mid 1400s the piazza was paved and, to ensure public health,
the magistracy ordered that meat was no longer to be butchered
in the open air. In this way they put a stop to the use of the
well - later known as the pozzo del Leoncino (
vi) - as
a dump for discarded meat scraps. At the end of the nineteenth
century, the Michelucci iron works built permanent metal stalls
for the food merchants; during the first two decades of this century,
the stalls were substituted by stands made in masonry and the
piazza was newly paved.
American bombing of the city greatly damaged the walled stands so
that after the war they were replaced by a reinforced concrete structure
(which the Pistoians called il gabbione or large cage) to be used
as an indoor market. At this time the Leoncino well was moved to
the cathedral square where, deprived of any possible use, it became
a kind of monument. The piazza della Sala regained its original
appearance after restoration in the late 1980s, with the return
of the Leoncino well and of the stands selling food goods.
(
n.)
refers to the umber of the file-card (
s.i.)
means see information inside
The
Leoncino Well
During the Sala's reorganization in the fourteenth century,
the city magistrates decided to clean the well of detritus and to
renovate it in order to facilitate the raising of the water. The
old quadrangular parapet was substituted by a circular one and the
pulley needed to raise the bucket was placed under an architrave
supported by two columns. The architrave is composed of different
materials which can be distinguished in three horizontal sections.
The first one, in white marble, is decorated with the Florentine
lily and the Pistoian coat of arms, symbols of the powers responsible
for the fourteenth century restructuring of the square. The second
strip is made up of blocks of green marble and once had an inscription
which is no longer legible. The third strip is again in white marble
and supports the Florentine Marzocco, a sandstone lion who holds
his left paw over the Pistoian coat of arms. This lion, from which
the well takes its name, was only added in the mid 1500s as can
be read in the inscription: "In the time of Niccolò Castellani captain
and commissioner 1529".
