PRATO, a city of the duchy of Tuscany, in Italy, the capital of a district called a vicariate, of the same name, in the circle of Florence. It stands on the river Bisenzio. It is surrounded with walls and ditches. It contains some handsome plazas, a theatre, a cathedral, twelve parish and seventeen monastic churches, four hospitals, and 10,000 inhabitants, who make linen and woollen cloths, paper, copper ware, and other articles, and draw from quarries some good millstone.