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Photo © Sansa55
Photo © Sansa55

Prato’s accessible museums

A journey through barrier-free museums and cultural institutions

Prato is a multicultural city that has a lot to offer to lovers of less touristy destinations: it has a great food and wine tradition with plenty of products known worldwide, but also numerous cultural realities that make it really interesting to discover.
Also famous for its textile industry, it is home to several very diverse museum institutions.
Let's find out together which ones are accessible, for an increasingly inclusive tourism.

Contents
  • 1.
    Civic Museum
  • 2.
    Textile Museum
  • 3.
    Museum of the Opera del Duomo
  • 4.
    Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art
  • 5.
    Museum of Planetary Sciences

Civic Museum

Praetorian Palace (Palazzo Pretorio)
Praetorian Palace (Palazzo Pretorio) - Credit: Gerry Labrijn

The Civic Museum is housed inside the 13th-century Palazzo Pretorio, a symbolic building of civic architecture and of the city history, freed at the turn of the century from Baroque additions with a restoration that accentuated its imposing medieval layout.
The collection originates from the Quadreria di Palazzo comunale, established in 1788 and reorganized in 1858 by Gaetano Guasti, and includes works of art from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.
A journey through 3 thousand works including paintings, drawings, sculptures: a true journey through the history of the city through its artistic heritage.
Free wheelchairs can be borrowed for free inside the museum.
The entrance doors are pushed open by hand, and the internal elevator has Braille numbering on the internal and external buttons.
The Praetorian Palace Museum (Museo di Palazzo Petronio), in addition, has set up a plan to enable the use of services to be fully accessible. The room dedicated to the Sacred Girdle, which encloses the 14th-century predella by Bernardo Daddi, is equipped with communication support tools that can meet the needs of people with complex communication needs or the need for simple communication and comprehension support.

Textile Museum

Textile Museum
Textile Museum

The Textile Museum is one of the most important centers in the world dedicated to textile art and technology and offers a path to discover ancient and contemporary textiles and textile traditions of the city.
The building that houses the museum is also a part of the exhibition route: it is the old Cimatoria Campolmi, one of the oldest factories in the area that dates back to the 19th century and is located right in the heart of Prato, within the medieval walls.

Museum of the Opera del Duomo

Museum of the Opera del Duomo
Museum of the Opera del Duomo

The Museum of the Opera del Duomo is located to the left of the Cathedral - inside the Bishop's Palace (Palazzo Vescovile) - and houses works of art from the entire diocese: paintings, sculptures and sacred vestments from the 12th to the 19th century.
Here you can admire masterpieces such as the marble parapet of the pulpit by Donatello (1433-38) which, until 1970, stood in the outer corner of the cathedral facade and was later restored: there are seven panels within which a dance of celebrating angels is woven.
Works of art preserved in the museum also include the large altarpiece by Filippo Lippi depicting the funeral of St. Jerome, the Crucifix by Sandro Botticelli, and the Madonna Enthroned by Giroldo da Como from the 13th century.
The entire museum is accessible except for the excavation part of the archaeological section, which is located in the basement area.

Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art

Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art
Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art

The Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art, opened in 1988, was the first center in Italy built specifically to house and promote international avant-garde art.
Over the years, an important permanent collection has been built up, consisting of works by major artists of the last three decades, acquired as a testament to the Center's exhibition and research activities.
The building itself is a work of art in the city of Prato: it was originally designed by the rationalist architect Italo Gamberini and later renovated and expanded by the architect Maurice Nio.
Free wheelchairs can be borrowed for free inside the center.

Museum of Planetary Sciences

Museum of Planetary Sciences
Museum of Planetary Sciences

The Museum of Planetary Sciences is an itinerary designed to popularize the spectacular nature of the Universe in an accessible and engaging way. Astrophysics, astronomy, and geology, like the study of minerals and planets, become subjects truly for everyone, thanks to an itinerary that takes into account the varying needs of visitors.
The museum's exhibition itinerary, characterized by large curved concave and convex display areas, is the result of a perfect integration between the building's characteristic architectural elements and the story these exhibits tell.
The environment is almost dark - illuminated only by the diffused light coming from the showcases -and prepares for a kind of journey through time and space that, starting from the origin of the Universe, winds its way to the formation and evolution of our Solar System and planet Earth in particular.
The key witnesses to this fascinating tale are precisely the precious meteorites from Space that contain within them unique information about the first moments of the birth of the planets.
For visitors who are blind or visually impaired, thanks to the invaluable collaboration with the Unioni Ciechi di Prato local branch, a tactile path has been set up that, starting from the museum map, leads to the discovery of the constellations and the solar system; moreover, by means of three showcases that allow for the manipulation of some original specimens, the meteorite and mineral collections can be discovered.

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