Chiesa di Sant'Agostino

The Church of Sant'Agostino in Prato combines a medieval brick structure with later altarpieces and chapels. Its brick columns, cloister and surviving frescoes record the history of the Augustinian complex.

Why it matters

Augustinians established an oratory and convent here in 1270–71. The church took shape around 1400, and its cylindrical brick columns with carved capitals are an early local expression of forms later associated with Renaissance architecture. A wartime bomb damaged the apse; restoration in 1964–66 exposed medieval fabric.

What to notice

The early fifteenth-century portal carries the arms of the Datini family, the Comune and the Ceppo Nuovo. Inside, three aisles are divided by brick columns, while seventeenth-century altars display paintings by artists including Giovan Battista Naldini, Lorenzo Lippi, Jacopo da Empoli and Giovanni Bizzelli. The chapter house contains a Pietà attributed by the regional tourism board to Agnolo Gaddi. A sixteenth-century cloister connects with the oratory of San Michele.

Context and history

The convent was suppressed in 1810 and later passed to diocesan clergy. During the 1512 sack of Prato, the inner cloister was damaged and became known as the Cloister of the Dead. In 1964 the complex passed to the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament. The presbytery received a new arrangement by Pistoian sculptor Jorio Vivarelli in 1984.