Museo del Tessuto

Prato's Museo del Tessuto occupies part of the former Campolmi textile factory within the medieval walls. Historic fabrics, sample books and designs connect textile art with the industry that helped shape the city.

Why it matters

The museum brings production and collecting into the same setting. Its industrial building gives a material context to objects that range from ancient textiles to modern design, showing cloth as both a crafted surface and the result of technical processes.

What to notice

The chimney, water basin and former boiler room preserve elements of the factory. Textile fragments, embroidered objects, sample books and sketches document different uses of fibres, colour and pattern. European silks and material from beyond Europe broaden the collection beyond Prato's own production.

Context and history

A fulling mill was documented on the site before 1326. Three local entrepreneurs acquired the mill in 1863 and developed the Campolmi finishing works, whose production ended in 1994. The museum's collections developed at the Tullio Buzzi textile institute in the mid-1970s. Their move to Campolmi in 2003 connected this teaching and collecting history with the preservation of the factory, in a complex also adapted for the Lazzerini library.