TIPO Festival Prato 2026: Inside the Textile Factories and Workshops

Most visitors see Prato, if at all, from a train window on the way to Florence. For four days this October, the city gives you a good reason to get off: it opens its textile factories, company archives and workshops to the public.

TIPO Festival 2026 runs from October 22 to 25, 2026. TIPO stands for Turismo Industriale Prato, and this year’s theme is Fabbric’azioni, a play on the Italian words for “manufacturing” and “actions”.

This is not the Tuscany of vineyards and Renaissance frescoes. It is the Tuscany that still makes things, in what the organizers call the largest textile district in Europe. Below you will find the program, prices and how to book.

What TIPO Festival 2026 Is About

TIPO Festival is Prato’s industrial tourism event, organized by the city of Prato. The program mixes guided visits to working companies, walking itineraries, museum openings, reuse workshops, family activities and shows staged in production spaces.

The 2026 edition is backed by EPIC (Experience Prato Industrial Culture), a European project funded through the European Urban Initiative. The organizers say it adds immersive and virtual reality experiences to the festival.

Most activities are free or cost between €5 and €15, but many have only a few places per shift. Some were already fully booked more than three weeks before the festival, so do not leave this to the last minute.

👉 Looking for ideas on what to do in Tuscany? Download the GetYourGuide app and get 5% off the first activity you book, in Italy or anywhere else.
📩 Ask for your code here (it arrives automatically by email). More info.

Open Factories: The Textile Companies Opening Their Doors

The heart of the festival is Open Factories: guided tours of textile companies that open specially for TIPO. Each one shows a different part of the textile chain.

• Comistra (Montemurlo), Friday, October 23, 5 p.m., €5. Founded in 1920 and run by four generations of the same family, it turns textile waste into recycled wool and fabrics.
• Plures Textile Hub (Prato), Friday, October 23, tours at 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., free. A new facility for sorting and treating textile waste so the fibers can be reused. Fully booked when we checked on September 30.
• Gruppo Colle and DHG, Dyeing House Gallery (Usella, in the municipality of Cantagallo), Saturday, October 24, tours at 9:30, 10:30 and 11:30 a.m., €5. A 90-minute visit to an industrial dyehouse, with live demonstrations of crochet, hand weaving, wet felting and spinning.
• Marco Lucchesi (Prato), Saturday, October 24, tours at 3 and 3:15 p.m., €5. A wool mill founded in 1897, with a private archive of more than a century of fabric collections.
• Manteco (Montemurlo), Saturday, October 24, tours at 3:30 and 5 p.m., €5. About one hour, including the company archive, Casa Manteco.

Montemurlo and Cantagallo are outside the city of Prato. Check how you will get there before you book (more on that below).

Guided Itineraries Through the Textile District

If you prefer to see the city and its industry together, these tours are a good fit:

• The Vibrant District (Il distretto vivo), Saturday and Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., €10. It starts at the Textile Museum and stops at local textile companies and at Palazzo Pretorio. The companies visited change from day to day.
• Stories of Thread and Community (Storie di filo e comunità), Saturday and Sunday, 2:30 to 6 p.m., €10. From Prato Cathedral to Palazzo Datini and Lanarchico, following the personal and business stories behind the district.
• From Factory to Cultural Center, Saturday and Sunday, four tours a day between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., free, maximum 20 people each. About 90 minutes inside the former Cimatoria Campolmi, the old textile factory that now houses the Textile Museum.
• Manifatture Digitali Cinema, Saturday and Sunday, four tours a day between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., free, maximum 20 people each. A behind-the-scenes look at a center for film and TV craft: set design, special effects and digital technologies.
• Macrolotto Zero, Saturday, October 24, 3:30 and 5 p.m., free. A walk through a former industrial neighborhood, now one of the most multicultural parts of Prato, and its urban regeneration projects. Fully booked when we checked on September 30.
• Coiano Fulling Mill (Gualchiera di Coiano), Saturday, October 24, guided tours from 10 a.m., free. An ancient wool mill, opened to mark ten years of the association devoted to its recovery.

Also free, with no booking needed: an exhibition of costumes from the TV series Medici: Masters of Florence, worn by actors including Dustin Hoffman as Cosimo the Elder. It is at Manifatture Digitali Cinema, Via Santa Caterina, on October 22 from 6 to 8 p.m. and October 23 to 25 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 6 p.m.

Reuse Workshops, Swap Party and Family Activities

• Artfully Refashion, Saturday, October 24, 10 a.m. to noon, Textile Museum, €5. Turn a scarf into a small backpack with needle, thread and fabric.
• Lottozero Fashion Exchange, Saturday, October 24, 3 to 9 p.m., free. A clothes swap party with an upcycling workshop and a DJ set. You can bring up to 10 items in good condition, each worth at least €10, and get exchange coupons in return.
• Artist-Inspired Textiles, Friday and Saturday, October 23 and 24, 9 p.m., €5. A short talk on textiles in the art of the Palazzo Pretorio Museum, followed by a fabric painting workshop for all ages. Booking by email only (25 places), and you pay on the night.
• Factories and Bricks, Sunday, October 25, 4 p.m., free, for children from 7. Kids build Prato’s historic factories with LEGO bricks after a tour of MUMAT, the Museum of Textile Machinery in Mercatale di Vernio.
• Weaving Words, Sunday, October 25, 4 to 6 p.m., Textile Museum, €5 per child (one adult included), for ages 7 to 10.

A tablet weaving workshop on Saturday was also on the program, but it was already fully booked on September 30.

Shows in Factories and Late-Night Museums

• Renzo Rubino, Friday, October 23, 9:30 p.m., at Balli Il Lanificio, Via Bologna 106, €15 plus booking fee. An intimate piano bar show with Italian pop classics and requests from the audience.
• Stand Up Comedy Night, Sunday, October 25, 9:30 p.m., at Marini Industrie in Montemurlo, €15 plus booking fee. Three comedians known from the Italian TV show Propaganda Live.

On October 23 and 24, four museums stay open until 11 p.m.: the Textile Museum, the Centro Pecci for contemporary art, the Palazzo Pretorio Museum and the Cathedral Museum.

On the weekend, Piazza San Francesco hosts Collezionare in Piazza, a vintage and collectibles market with around 35 to 40 stalls, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on October 24 and 25.

Prato and Textile Recycling: Why It Matters for Sustainable Fashion

Recycling is not a new trend in Prato. According to the city of Prato, cardato, a warm, heavy woolen fabric, was the mainstay of local industry from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, “especially in its ‘regenerated’ version”.

Regenerated wool is made by recycling old clothes and production waste into new yarn. The trade created a local expert, the rag man, who could sort fibers by touch. After World War II, Prato became the world’s most important center for collecting rags.

That is why the festival feels so current. Companies like Comistra still regenerate fibers a century later, the new Textile Hub sorts textile waste for reuse, and the organizers describe Prato as an international reference point for green fashion.

To see the whole story in one place, visit the Textile Museum: its permanent exhibition, inside a former textile factory, covers the regenerated wool cycle.

How to Book: Prices, Places and Language

Booking is already open. There is no single ticket office: each activity is booked through its own channel, all linked from the official program.

• Paid tours and workshops (€5 or €10) are sold in the online shop of the Textile Museum. The page is in Italian: look for the TIPO Festival category.
• Free visits require registration on Eventbrite, through the links in the program.
• The two evening shows are sold on TicketOne.
• Artist-Inspired Textiles is booked by email at museo.palazzopretorio@comune.prato.it.

Places are limited. Where the program gives numbers, they are small: 20 people per shift for the Campolmi and Manifatture Digitali Cinema tours, 25 for the fabric painting workshop.

A note on language: the booking pages are in Italian, and the program does not say whether any tour is offered in English. If you do not speak Italian, write to the Prato tourist office (info@pratoturismo.it, +39 0574 1837859) before booking.

Getting to Prato and Around the Festival

Prato is on the railway lines from Florence to Bologna and from Florence to Viareggio, and both stop at Prato Centrale. Tickets are sold on the Trenitalia website and app, and at station ticket machines. You can also compare times and prices on Trainline. Either way, check the last train back if you are going to an evening event.

Florence airport is about 20 km (12 miles) from Prato, and Pisa airport about 60 km (37 miles), according to Prato Turismo.

Several venues are outside the city of Prato: Comistra, Manteco and Marini Industrie are in Montemurlo, Gruppo Colle in Usella (Cantagallo), and MUMAT in Mercatale di Vernio. For those, a car makes life much easier. See our guide to renting a car in Florence.

Staying in Florence for longer? Our tips for a trip to Florence in October will help you plan the rest of the week.

Read also: Prato: Our City Guide