The Pratese territory is constituted from Bisenzio river Valley and from the cone of fluvial enlargement to its outlet.

The river, rationally used since the high Middle Ages for means of ¨Gore¨ (approximately 50 Km of channels) and one the complex structure of distribution of waters (the ¨Cavalciotto¨), for its particular natural slope allowed the installation of a wide system of flour mills.

Around the Gores industry was developed ¨Middle Age industry¨ of textile and subsequently the production of the wool.

The takeoff of the area moreover was facilitated from the possibility of relationship with the Po river plain (goes it oriented them north-south perpendicularly cuts the Appennines) and for the presence of a particular kind of ground especially good to wash (¨purgare¨) the cloth.

The presence on the small territory, in 18th century, more than one hundred flour water mills, one complex hydraulic structure and an entrepreneurial mercantile context help to build a particular one background to the city, then in 19th century it will make to gush the answer to the challenge of the industrial development.

The productive structures, constructed from the second half of 1800 to immediately previous years of the second world war, that already in part have been destroyed and that they risk to disappear definitively, they are one testimony of the birth and the evolution of the industry to Prato.