The most photographed element of the Pistoia townscape is not a church but a hospital in a square at the end of Via Pacini – the thirteenth-century Ospedale del Ceppo, which takes its name from the hollowed-out tree stump (ceppo) in which alms were traditionally collected. Emblazoned along its length is the feature that makes it famous, Giovanni della Robbia’s painted terracotta frieze of the Theological Virtues and the Seven Works of Mercy. Completed in the early sixteenth century, it is a startlingly colourful panoply of Renaissance types and costume: pilgrims, prisoners, the sick, the dead.