Piazza San Francesco

Piazza San Francesco in Prato brings together a medieval Franciscan church, a Baroque fountain and later civic monuments. Its buildings and sculpture record different forms of patronage within one historic square.

Why it matters

The space developed around the Franciscan foundation on ground known as l'appianato. Later additions extended its identity beyond the religious complex, bringing public commemoration and the preservation of a book collection into the same setting.

What to notice

The Fontana dei Delfini derives from Ferdinando Tacca's design of about 1658; the fountain in the square is a twentieth-century replacement. The obelisk honours Garibaldi. The Roncioniana library palace adds an eighteenth-century frontage and a neoclassical reading hall, with an earlier glazed group of Raphael and Tobias by Andrea della Robbia associated with its holdings.

Context and history

Partial demolition of the city walls created l'appianato during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Tacca's dolphin fountain followed in the seventeenth century. The Roncioniana palace was built in the later eighteenth century for Marco Roncioni's collection, while the obelisk was raised in 1889. These successive interventions gave the Franciscan forecourt a broader civic character.