It is said: Italy is much better than how it is represented and there is a kernel of truth. We always look for appreciation that we cannot do alone. “Italians forgive everything but not success” he said Enzo Ferrari, a great Italian. However, if you do not personalize the results you obtain too much and make them objective and transparent, your opinion can change.
Italy is appreciated throughout the world for its history and culture, for progress in many fields. For having been able to get back up after the disasters of a dictatorship and a world war. How much are we able to enhance our ability to "know how" in the most diverse situations today? To transmit to the new generations values forged in a thousand asperities and which make our being better?
The novelty of industrial tourism
The industrial tourism experiment being carried out in the city of Prato has the ambition of answering the previous questions. It is not a metropolis, but an average town that has gone through history while renewing its own identity, to the point of being able to welcome thousands of foreign workers who have made it more famous and competitive on an international level. There is no doubt that it is a story of women and men who have merged commitment to work with urban and technological transformations.
From Saturday 27 January the guided tours of the city will resume TYPE project (Turismo Industriale Prato) with the aim of bringing people closer to the city's history. An original and rare form of hospitality in a site that has been dedicated to textiles since the Middle Ages. From the tradition of the rag-pickers to today's green fashion, there is only one thread that links the history of Prato to the fashion shows of the great designers and to the global reputation for dealing with high-quality fabrics.
The success syndrome
It is the textile district largest in Europe. The transition from artisanal production to large-scale production was not painless, if only for the environmental repercussions and the increase in population. The chimneys of industrial archeology are the antinomy to the super-fast machines that challenge international competition.
Until March and then on Festival TYPE of April we will go to an area of 2.500 companies and 18.600 employees. Numbers that show the values of effort, economic enterprise and dedication to a winning Italian adventure. It would be naive to describe the city, based on the information gathered, as the place of the greatest virtues. If you do propaganda it is easy, but this is not the case.
Instead, it is worth asking ourselves how many other cities have the same opportunity to show themselves and underestimate the opportunity due to negligence, ending up being prisoners of the Enzo Ferrari syndrome. Of the government, of the Ministry of Made in Italy, Culture, Youth, Tourism, they can't even think about it, beyond Botticelli's Venus in the influencer version.
Prato, says the Committee that manages the TIPO project, presents an "inside and out" from the industrial archaeologies to the active factories, to make those who come here experience first-hand a history admired throughout the world. A positive Italian spirit that is much appreciated.
