Santa Barbara Fortress, Pistoia

The Fortress of Santa Barbara is a fourteenth-century urban castle built from 1331 to house troops guarding the Tuscan city of Pistoia after the Florentine Republic's victory over Castruccio Castracani. It was expanded in 1531 under the design of Nanni Unghero and again under Cosimo I de' Medici, when Giovanni Battista Belluci and Bernardo Buontalenti added a perimeter wall linking it to the city's other defenses; it later served as a barracks and then a jail before restoration began in 1970. Today the fortress grounds are parkland with surviving ramparts, and its chapel retains Baroque frescoes.