Lonely Planet lists Pistoia among world's top spots

(ANSA) - Rome, October 25 - Lonely Planet's 2017 Best in Travel guide has listed Pistoia as seventh top destination among cities after Bordeaux, Cape Town and Los Angeles. The Tuscan city has been named Italian Capital of Culture for next year.
    Top countries include Canada, Colombia and Finland and top regions Peru's Choquequirau, New Zealand's Taranaki and Portugal's the Azores.
    Pistoia mayor Samuele Bertinelli commented by saying that "the naming of Pistoia among the ten top destinations to visit in 2017 by one of the most popular and prestigious tour guides launches the city into a dimension of extraordinary international visibility it had never before had." He added that Pistoia was already known for many things including its agriculture and food industries, musical festivals and some extremely important works of art, such as Luca della Robbia's 'The Visitation', which will be exhibited at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts until December 4 and will later move to the National Gallery of Washington prior to returning to Italy in 2017.
    Mayor Bertinelli said that one of the aims of the City of Culture would be to "bring together the profiles of Pistoia that are already known to create a unified image of the city, which can be shared heritage of all its inhabitants and adequately represent it and its territory in Italy and throughout the world. Being named by Lonely Planet - and the only city in Italy to have been named by it - is an initial, very significant result of this work."