Cathedral of Saint Stephen

The Cattedrale di Santo Stefano is Prato's most important building and one of the finest Romanesque-Gothic churches in Tuscany. The striped green and white marble facade is characteristic of the Prato school, and the exterior is punctuated by Donatello's famous Pulpit of the Sacred Girdle — a little marble balcony projecting from the corner, supported by a capital carved with dancing putti.

Inside, the real treasure is the fresco cycle in the Cappella Maggiore by Filippo Lippi, painted between 1452 and 1465. Lippi depicted the lives of John the Baptist and Saint Stephen with vivid naturalism and striking portraiture; his scenes have a theatricality quite unlike anything else in Tuscany. The famous panel showing the head of John the Baptist being delivered to Herod is particularly powerful. The adjacent chapel holds a reliquary of the Sacred Girdle itself, shown publicly five times a year to crowds gathered in the piazza below.

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On the exterior corner of the cathedral hangs the Pulpit of the Sacred Girdle — a tiny marble balcony by Donatello and Michelozzo built for a specific purpose: displaying the Virgin's belt, supposedly a relic given to the apostle Thomas by Mary at her Assumption. The girdle is still taken out and shown to the crowd five times a year, just as it has been since the 13th century.

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