Montecatini Terme-Monsummano train station

If it is true that a railway station is the business card for a city, the old Leopoldina, today "Montecatini Centro" built in 1853 (still existing and functioning, recently restored), appeared in the early 1930s, as a building no longer suitable for the times.

The demographic growth but especially the tourist development of the city required a larger, more functional and modern structure.

Thus, in 1932, it was decided to build a new station commensurate with the importance that Montecatini had assumed, the current "Montecatini Terme-Monsummano" not far from the heart of the city.

The project was entrusted to the Bolognese architect Angiolo Mazzoni, a brilliant professional at the time Chief Project Officer of the Ministry of Communications.

Started in 1933 and inaugurated on August 4, 1937, the new station has an important artistic value as well as a historical document since it represents one of the first examples of interior design of that period.

The building is characterized by a rational and articulated layout in distinct sections - housing, building for travelers, goods warehouse, canopies, waiting rooms, and deposits - all built with great coherence.

Clad in pink travertine slabs from Monsummano with alternating bands of violet porphyry from Predazzo, it has an exquisitely horizontal development, designed to allow a functional connection of services to the tracks, interrupted and emphasized by the high central tower with a pentagonal plan and a clock which in the architect's intentions had a function similar to that of a lighthouse.

The beautiful waiting rooms of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class, the subject of careful restoration together with the historic Stationmaster's office, make the "great" station - as the people of Montecatini call it - a unique place since no other railway station in the national territory still has all the waiting rooms intact.

The complex includes a large square harmonized by a three-basin degrading fountain known as the Mazzoni Fountain.

The architectural work, one of the most important in the thermal city, was hailed by general consensus.