Church and Convent of San Domenico in Pistoia

The Church and Convent of San Domenico were founded by Dominican friars around the middle of the 13th century, close to Pistoia's second circle of city walls, between the city and the countryside. The building, in the shape of a Latin cross, consists of a single nave with wooden trusses and a transept with a cross vault, along which there are the apses. The building underwent profound transformations, particularly during the 17th century, when the ancient stained glass windows were replaced by large Baroque windows.

The church was one of the places that Pope Clement IX of Pistoia, born Giulio Rospigliosi, loved the most in the city. Between 1668 and 1670, he had four funerary monuments placed on the walls of the transept, including that of his parents, all made in the workshop of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in Rome. The patronage of the Rospigliosi family led to the creation of the impressive wooden choir in the church's counterfaçade, which contains the organ that was built in 1613 by Cosimo Ravani from Lucca and was restored in 1663 by the Flemish Willem Hermans at the behest of the future Pope, Giulio Rospigliosi.