A
dynamic city with a mercantile vocation since the Middle Ages, when wool manufacturing
was already a flourishing industry that took merchants from Prato all over Europe
(it seems that one of them was responsible for inventing the bill of exchange),
Prato has preserved its manufacturing tradition over the centuries and is now
on the cutting edge of textile production.
A free commune with a popular government in the 12th century and a proud adversary
of Florence, which conquered it in 1351 and kept a firm hold on the reins until
the end of the 18th century, the city was one of the most productive artistic
centres in Tuscany. Within its walls worked artists such as Donatello and Michelozzo,
the authors of the splendid pulpit in the Cathedral, Filippo Lippi, a painter
of extraordinary narrative talent, and his son Filippino, as well as Giovanni
Pisano and Agnolo Gaddi to mention some of the most famous.
The richness of its past has not stifled the innovative drive of its present:
Prato, with its Museum named after Luigi Pecci, is still a centre of national
reference for contemporary art.
