Identity: the Holy Girdle, Datini and a multi-ethnic city

The Holy Girdle

The city's most venerated relic is the Sacra Cintola (Holy Girdle), a green wool belt with gold threads that tradition identifies as the Virgin Mary's gift to Saint Thomas. It reached Prato around 1141 with Michele Dagomari and on his death, in 1172, passed to the parish church of Santo Stefano, now the Cathedral; the chapel that holds it was frescoed by Agnolo Gaddi and his workshop in 1392-95. The municipality and the Diocese jointly hold the keys needed to open its case.

The Girdle is shown to the faithful from the Cathedral's outdoor pulpit, the work of Donatello and Michelozzo (1434-38), five times a year: at Christmas, at Easter, on 1 May, on 15 August and on 8 September. The 8 September ostension, the feast of the Nativity of Mary, is the most solemn and coincides with the Corteggio Storico historical parade.

People and memory

The city's emblematic figure is Francesco di Marco Datini, a medieval merchant and entrepreneur, whose tombstone is in the church of San Francesco. The municipality's portal names the writer Curzio Malaparte and the actor Francesco Nuti among Prato's natives. The Palazzo Pretorio, on the town square, is the civic museum with works by Filippo and Filippino Lippi.

Communities

According to the municipal Statistics Office's demographic analysis of registry data at 31 December 2025, the Chinese community is by far the largest foreign one, with growth slowing in recent years; it is followed by the Albanian, Pakistani and Romanian communities, then the Moroccan, Bangladeshi, Georgian and Nigerian ones. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities are among the fastest growing.