The Pine Forest

Unlike most other Italian cities, the heart of Montecatini is not occupied by historic buildings but by an immense green space.

For those born here it is simply La Pineta but walking there you notice the presence of a multiple variety of tree species.

It was born as a spa park in the first decade of the 1900s.

Its main creator is the architect Giulio Bernardini.

The era and the context in which the spa park was born

The context in which it was created is important because it marks the transition from the town of Bagni to the spa city.

In the second half of the 19th century, the healing properties of the various springs, some of which were discovered in those years, such as Torretta (1832), Tamerici (1843), Martinelli (1843), Lazzerini (1852), Fortuna (1853), Gabrielli (1863), Scannavini (1888) and many others, began to be studied with a scientific method.

Fedele Fedeli (Rosignano Marittimo, 23 August 1812 – Pisa, 5 March 1888) and Paolo Savi (Pisa, 1798 – 1871) are responsible not only for the “modern” study of the healing properties of the waters enriched by important knowledge in the geological field but also for a popularization of the beneficial effects of the same so effective as to attract not only Italian but also foreign “curists” to the Baths.

Therefore, the city was already known at the end of the 19th century.

Its fortunate geographical position certainly contributed to facilitating its fortune, but also and above all the construction of a whole series of road infrastructures starting with the railway completed in 1853, the funicular inaugurated in 1898 and, subsequently, the Lucca-Pescia-Monsummano tramway which has been in operation since 1907.

This development led the two companies that managed the springs at the time, namely the Regie Terme, state-owned, and the private company Nuove Terme, to renovate the spa buildings from an architectural and medical perspective and also from an industrial perspective for the production of salts.

At the time, the town did not appear very different from the one conceived and built by Gaspare Maria Paoletti (Florence, 1727 – 1813) at the time and at the behest of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo.

This can be clearly seen from the topographic map of the springs and the related establishments that accompany the treatise Storia Naturale e Medica delle Acque Minerali dell’Alta Val di Nievole e speciale di Montecatini published in 1870 and written by the doctor Fedele Fedeli and the geologist Paolo Savi: Il Tettuccio (top center), the Rinfresco (to its left), and, along the Viale dei Bagni that led from the Tettuccio to the Church, the Bagno Regio (on the right) and Le Leopoldine (on the left).

 

A series of green areas were created near the thermal springs or the most important architecture, such as the church of Cambray-Digny, and near the avenues.

And the number of specimens and species that were planted is impressive. Just think that in the Park annexed to the Palazzina Regia there were 167 holm oaks, 15 forty-one year old pines, 7 Indian chestnut trees, 11 plane trees, 2 lime trees, 8 acacias, 2 cat trees, 4 elms as old as the aforementioned holm oaks, 3 laurel trees, bay trees and shrubs of various species...

But all around these areas there was open countryside where farms cultivated with vines, mulberry trees, herbaceous crops and fruit trees reigned.

The work of Bernardini, “the architect of the spa”

Thus at the beginning of the 20th century the Royal Spa, led first by the health inspector Pietro Grocco (1856 –1916) and then by Carlo Fedeli, and owners of the Tettuccio, Leopoldine, Bagno Regio establishments and the Rinfresco, Regina, Savi and Olivo springs «improved the Tettuccio facilities, surrounded the Tettuccio and Rinfresco springs with parks and gardens, demolishing the old farms», as we know from Alfredo Camilletti author of “Giulio Bernardini a biography from 1863 to 1914”, carrying out an impressive work that was concluded in 1903.

The Nuove Terme company, owned by Pietro Baragiola, owned several springs, including La Torretta, Le Tamerici, La Fortuna and was directed, from a technical-artistic point of view, by the architect from Pescia, Giulio Bernardini, whom Baragiola asked to intervene to make those changes that make its properties worthy of the increasingly important role that Montecatini, thanks to its waters, was acquiring.

But not before a two-week trip that would take him to discover the most important spas in Switzerland, Bohemia and Germany.

Having left Como by train on 5 October 1901, he visited, together with Pietro and Luigi Baragiola, Karlsbad, Marienbad, Franznsbad and Kissingen, Wiesbaden, Baden Baden and Basel.

To keep up with the times and compete with the Central European spa towns, the quality of the healing waters alone was not enough. It was necessary to combine beauty, amenities, well-being but also entertainment and fun: this was essentially the lesson learned from that trip that had provided precious ideas that Bernardini would note in a report, dated Pescia 15 November 1901, and which would inspire him for the renovation of the Bagni delle Nuove Terme and the entire city.

Green spaces around the establishments, he had seen it in each of the European spas visited, they should have played a fundamental role in the change because their function was not only to make the city more beautiful but also to create well-being, thus contributing to the success of the therapies practiced.

Thus, from the renovation of La Torretta, Le Tamerici, La Fortuna and the Excelsior, thanks to Bernardini's project, a real thermal park was born that unites the entire area that, to the west of Viale Verdi, borders the Regie Terme.

The parks and gardens of the establishments surround the buildings and marry each other through flowerbeds, ponds, avenues and paths and furnishings creating a unicum of pleasantness that still exists today.

The greatest merit of the professional from Pescia was probably being able to adapt, in a harmonious and elegant way, the best of the European spa capitals visited to the reality of the place.

And the interventions carried out in various Italian spa cities, Montecatini first and foremost but also Salsomaggiore, where he worked in 1914, and Agnano, where he worked from 1917 to 1919, made him so famous that he was called "the architect of the spas".