- Florence
The Textile Museum is a place for families, tourists, designers, stylists, and all fashion, costume and textile enthusiasts.
The tour begins with the factory's spectacular boiler room where the steam generator that once powered Campolmi's textile machinery still stands. From there, the tour continues inside an atmospheric space where collections of antique textiles are displayed in rotation. The next section is dedicated to materials and processes, which explains textile fibres and their manufacturing process in a simple and clear way.
The Textile Museum's first floor opens with a visit to the Prato textile city room, dedicated to local textile history, and continues with an engaging multimedia installation focusing on recent transformations of the district and the city. Finally, the tour concludes with two large 800-square-meter rooms that periodically host major temporary exhibitions.
The Textile Museum is the largest cultural center in Italy dedicated to the appreciation of ancient and contemporary textiles, costume and fashion.
Prato's textile district has its origins in the Middle Ages and still stands today as the most important in Europe. The Museum's headquarters is in the restored premises of the former Campolmi Cimatoria, the last major textile factory of the 19th and 20th centuries within the medieval city walls of Prato and today an important tourist destination for lovers of industrial archaeology.
The Museum's holdings consist of an outstanding collection of artifacts documenting the art of textiles and fashion from the past to the present day. The Museum continuously renews its contents by displaying the collections on a rotating basis and organizing temporary exhibitions.