2024 – 2028 // EPIC - Experience Prato Industrial Culture

The EPIC project “Experience Prato Industrial Culture,” approved within the “European Urban Initiative” call for proposals, is led by the Municipality of Prato, acting as the lead partner, together with nine other partners, both public and private. Thanks to this project, the city of Prato will have five million euros available to invest in industrial tourism over four years.

EPIC will enable the implementation, enrichment, and further development of the “TIPO – Turismo industriale Prato” (Prato Industrial Tourism) experience, a project that has been part of the city’s tourism offerings since 2021. EPIC will enhance the city’s industrial heritage as a key resource for attracting tourists, developing a tourism offering where visitors can explore industrial sites and appreciate the historical and contemporary heritage of the District’s operating companies.

This “never-ending tourism” approach aims to attract tourists year-round, expanding experiences from the real world to digital and virtual domains. By integrating physical and digital experiences, the project will build an unprecedented industrial tourism experience, extending both in space (inside and outside the destination) and in time (before, during, and after the visit).

The project will involve stakeholders from the city and neighboring areas in a participatory co-design process, with thematic meetings to co-design new actions, initiatives, and events to be tested in the field. These products will merge physical and digital experiences, integrating real visits to the city’s industrial, cultural, and natural sites with immersive experiences offered by advanced digital technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality.

The experiences of this new way of experiencing the territory touristically will be available at specific locations, which will be installed at the Campolmi hub, the Manifatture Digitali (Digital Manufacturing), and other points throughout the city.A digital marketing strategy will also be co-designed to promote Prato as an attractive, sustainable, inclusive, and circular city, accompanied by a catalog of itineraries and products that will be published on major tourism platforms.

The project will also implement a capacity-building program for tourism stakeholders and build an innovative multi-level governance structure to manage the tourist destination.

The project also includes a phase of capitalization and transfer of the Prato experience to other cities.