“Never again with Florence”: Prato Identity between Subalternity and Local Pride

This paper investigates how the urban identity of Prato, the second largest Tuscan city, was shaped by a dialectic and conflictual relationship with Florence, to whom Prato was politically and culturally subaltern. The first section of the paper provides a historical framework of this relationship, demonstrating the evolution of political issues and conflicts between them over time. The second section applies the notion of “imagined community” developed by Benedict Anderson to the interpretation of Prato’s urban identity and uses Curzio Malaparte’s literary depictions of the city as a source for its study. In the third section of the paper, Tajfel and Turner’s integrative group theory is introduced in order to explain the oppositional nature of Prato’s collective self-image. The concluding section interprets the way Prato is imagined in its citizens’ collective consciousness as a community in order improve its perceived status.