The bell tower, the watch and the golden lions.

Hello hivers, I just came back at home after a walk along the alleys in the center of my city (Pistoia, Italy) and while I was around I took some pics of the ancient buildings in Piazza del Duomo, the main square.
As I wrote before, I love to focus myself on the details more than on the architectures of the buildings, because sometimes we can miss the details even if they could be very interesting and, the most part of they time, those details can tell us beautiful stories. 😊

In this content I want to share with you some details of the bell tower of the Cathedral of Saint Zeno (just to know, the first written mention of the cathedral was in the 923, so it's a very very ancient building).
At first some historical information about the tower:
even if there are just confused informations about it, it seems this bell tower is a 12th-century reconstruction of an ancient Lombardic tower. Watching the tower we can see it has a lower part that seems more ancient and in a different style from the up.

(I took the 2 previous pics in different moments, so in the second one there are some dark clouds on the sky)
On the tower there is a large watch that, in the ancient time, helped people to know the hours:

This bell tower stands 67 metres high and, if you climb its around 200 steps (I can't do it cause my vertigo, argh!), there is a wonderful 360° all-round panoramic view!

Now it's time to show you the lions! Yes, the lions, but don't worry, they are just sculpted golden lions on the wall of the tower!
Just to know, the animal symbol of my city is the bear, not the lion, but this kind of stemma is everywhere here. This golden lion is called "marzocco" and it's the symbol of some florentine rich families of the past.
On the bell tower there are symbols and stemmas of each family that had power in my city called "capitani del popolo"(sure, in the ancient times) and, sure, more of them came to Florence. ^_^

See ya soon and stay safe,
Silvia

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^^ ****

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