Prato Audio Tours

Prato sits in the Bisenzio River valley between Florence and the Apennines, close enough to its famous neighbor that many travelers pass through without stopping. That is their loss. The city has been the center of Italian textile production for seven centuries, and the mix of old mills, warehouses, and modern fabric showrooms along the river gives it an industrial character entirely unlike any other Tuscan city. The Castello dell'Imperatore in the center of town is the only transalpine castle built by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, constructed around 1237 as part of his network of fortifications controlling the Via Cassia, and it still stands nearly complete in the middle of a roundabout.

Santa Maria delle Carceri, designed by Giuliano da Sangallo in 1485, is a perfect early Renaissance church built on a Greek-cross plan, so precisely proportioned that architects still use it as a textbook example of Albertian principles made physical.

Prato also has one of Italy's largest Chinese communities, drawn by the textile industry since the 1990s, which has added a genuine Chinatown centered on Via Pistoiese with dim sum restaurants open before most Italian establishments have thought about breakfast. The biscotti di Prato, hard almond cantucci meant for dipping in Vin Santo, are sold in every pasticceria in the city and are the real article.