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Via Giuliano da Sangallo 3, Poggio a Caiano (PO)  ·  +39 055 8798779 Rete Civica  ·  Associazioni  ·  Italiano
Pro Loco Poggio a Caiano
Tourist Association

THE TOWN CENTRE

Santa Maria del Rosario ChurchThe town is dominated by the Villa and, aside from it, preserves a few interesting architectural memories. The main ones are the churches of Santa Cristina in Pilli and Bonistallo, Cerreto, and the Barco Reale park, all located outside the town centre. The centre itself is essentially recent, if one excludes the strip that developed alongside the SS. 66 road, with a few very old houses (one, as mentioned, may have been the ancient stronghold of the Cancellieri family, or in any case the house where Lorenzo de' Medici stayed during his visits to the building site of the Villa). Worth noting in particular are the 19th-century building that houses the town hall, almost at the top of the hill; the fountain known as the "Mascherone", where the retaining wall of the Villa's garden begins, at the start of the ascent, and, facing the fountain itself, the 17th-century tabernacle with the Sacred Image of 1632.
In Piazza SS. Rosario stands the church of the same name, built between the late 19th and early 20th century on the initiative of a dedicated committee, which called for the transfer of the parish seat from the too-outlying church of Santa Maria a Bonistallo. Thus in 1889, in the place called "Il Parctaio", the first stone was laid for the construction of the new parish church, consecrated in 1903, though at the time without a façade or bell tower. The latter was completed in 1911, but was demolished in 1934 because it had been poorly designed. The present bell tower, built to a design by Ardengo Soffici, was inaugurated in 1938. Its slender, elegant profile, together with the Villa and Bonistallo, is one of the defining features of the Poggio a Caiano skyline. Inside the church, coming from Santa Maria a Bonistallo, is a painting executed around 1606,Istituto Sacro Cuore the Coronation of the Virgin, attributed to Alessandro Allori and restored in 1992. On the north side stands the mother house of the Institute of the Minim Sisters of the Sacred Heart, a congregation founded by Sister Margherita Caiani in the early 20th century.