Torretta thermal baths

The Torretta Thermal Baths complex, adjacent and partly immersed in the Pinewood, is located in a higher position than the other adjacent treatment facilities. It is surrounded by a large park, crossed by the homonymous stream that widens to form a pond.

 

The source of the Torretta thermal water, from which the facility takes its name, was discovered by Count Baldino Baldini in the early nineteenth century.

Originally, the Torretta complex consisted of a set of "factories", as Guido Biagi wrote in his 1901 guidebook In Valdinievole, "built after 1829 by Baldini, who wanted to recreate a medieval castle. One enters, through a kind of drawbridge, among crenellated towers, ramparts, and barracks, into a park, with flower-scented flowerbeds, which ends in a dense forest where, in the darkest recess, there is a Gothic chapel."

Towards the end of the 1800s, the property passed to Countess Giulia Bobrinskaja, a direct descendant of the Tsarina of Russia.

When the Torretta establishment was added to the Società delle Terme in the early 1900s, it was renovated by architect Bernardini and inaugurated on July 26th, 1902.

Bernardini had the beautiful loggia dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi built, in honor of the musician who was a frequent visitor to the Montecatini Baths. Designed in a "U" shape, the loggia delimited a square used both for listening to music and for drinking curative waters at the tables, as well as for commercial activities, since the Emporio dell'Arte della Ceramica dei Chini, owned by Galileo and his cousin Chino, was located inside. Inspired by the Florentine Quattrocento, this environment became the key element of the entire complex, which opened up to a view of the park below, giving it a prominent role.

A short distance away is the Giulia water source, a small temple built in the early 1900s by Bernardini himself. Also in the park is the so-called "Emiciclo": two staircases lead to a lower level where there are two symmetrical fountains - the "Fontana Media" and the "Sorgente acqua Villino" - inserted in shell-shaped niches with festive cherubs.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the establishment was already equipped with special departments for baths and various other therapies (showers, irrigations, inhalations of thermal water). Ugo Giovannozzi intervened in the establishment at the end of the 1920s. He had the pre-existing buildings demolished and his project included the construction of the entrance building, characterized by fake scratched bossages, festoons in the under-eaves and linteled windows, which remains intact in the facade until today. Giovannozzi also added a stand in the north corner of the Bernardini's loggia creating a circular space intended to accommodate the orchestra.

 

Not far from the loggia, there is another building called Terme Rinfresco. Giuseppe Manetti designed a building with a terrace-loggia, surmounted by a pediment, a sort of pronaos which was originally accessed through a two-ramp staircase that was never realized.

As a replacement for the old building, Ugo Giovannozzi designed a central-plan pavilion in 1927, but left the original colonnaded facade as a prospect, repeating it, with the same architectural motif, on the other three sides of the building. The internal walls are characterized by graffiti paintings with seaside representations made by Ezio Giovannozzi.

Near the Refreshment area, the circular temple of the Giulia spring is still visible.

The Torretta area is enclosed by a park of centuries-old plants, rich in paths, courses, and waterfalls that ends at the gates of the southern entrance where there is a neo-Gothic style chapel under which there are, like a crypt, cells with spherical dome and tomb monuments with noble coats of arms. A particular element of urban decor is the mosaic paving of the square in front, made up of gray river pebbles, in the middle of which a large Florentine lily is designed in white pebbles.

 

The establishment is currently not open to the public. The façade of the entrance building designed by Ugo Giovannozzi is visible, close to the splendid Tennis "La Torretta".