Prato Capital

For eight centuries Prato has spun and woven: its textile district is the largest in Europe, and the Textile Museum tells the epic, which begins with the papers of the merchant Francesco Datini. It is Tuscany's second city after Florence, and until 1992, when its province was created, it was the most populous comune in Italy that was not a provincial capital. The surprise is that the working city is also a city of art: the cathedral has an outdoor pulpit designed by Donatello and Michelozzo to show the Holy Girdle to the crowd, and inside a cycle by Filippo Lippi; the Centro Pecci was the first Italian museum built for contemporary art.

Beneath the city there is an older story too: in 1997, at Gonfienti, an Etruscan city nobody knew existed came to light, and it was already working wool. Medieval Prato was born instead from the merging of two neighbouring settlements, Borgo al Cornio and Castrum Prati. Today it hosts one of the largest Chinese communities in Europe, and its cooking has become double. The cantucci with vin santo, though, remain the obligatory ending.