WHEN WE ARRIVE IN PISTOIA
We have reached the end of our pilgrimage. Here is a short “thematic” itinerary dedicated to San Jacopo.
First of all, we go to the Baptistery, located in front of the Cathedral, and present the credential to the reception office: we can then collect the Jacopea.
Then we can visit the nearby Cathedral of San Zeno: it is accessed through the Holy Door opened for this Compostellan Holy Year. The silver altar of San Jacopo, a monumental example of metalworking, is kept in the chapel “of the Judgment”. The chapel is normally closed to the public by a gate, but pilgrims, if they ask the reception of the Baptistery, are accompanied to admire the altar and the precious reliquary. It is also possible to be accompanied by a guide, this is an excellent way to find out all the artistic and historical detail of the complex, with facilitated conditions.
Subsequently, at the Civic Museum, inside the city hall (Palazzo di Giano) a short distance from the cathedral, you can admire numerous paintings with Jacobean iconography, and a stone statue that depicting the Apostle.
In the Museum of the Cathedral of San Zeno, within the museum paths of the Ancient Palazzo dei Vescovi, there is the original sacristy of the Treasury of San Jacopo.
At the end of a journey of a few minutes, you reach Piazza Giovanni XXIII, where you can admire the precious decoration of the loggia of the ancient Spedale del Ceppo, where, among the panels depicting the seven works of mercy, there is the one dedicated to the “Hospitality of pilgrims “. From here, retracing the pilgrims’ route, you reach via Sant’Andrea where, in the church of Sant’Andrea, the architrave above the entrance portal represents the Journey of the Magi, the first pilgrims of Christianity.
Near the cathedral is the church of Sant’Antonio abate or del Tau, founded at the end of 1360, which presents the most important late Gothic pictorial cycle of Pistoia. It is the same order of the Antonians who were in the Hospital de San Antón, near Castrojeriz, on the Camino de Santiago.