Prato's 12th-century cathedral safeguards magnificent frescoes by Filippo Lippi behind the altar and Agnolo's beautiful fresco cycle of the Legend of the Holy Girdle (1392–95), in the chapel to the left of the entrance. Donatello and Michelozzo designed the unusual protruding pulpit (1428) on the cathedral's Pisan-Romanesque facade to publicly display the sacra cintola, a deeply venerated girdle believed to be given to St Thomas by the Virgin and brought to Prato from Jerusalem after the Second Crusade.
Brought out five times a year today, the gossamer-fine wool rope brocaded with gold thread is locked away in the chapel in a gold reliquary with three keys.
