Ground floor kitchen

Once the Datini kitchen, this area is now the section dedicated to the famous Prato merchant’s activity.
Together with the letters, written mostly in Tuscan vernacular, but also in other languages and dialects, the books and accounting registers, insurance policies and letters with specialized content allow us to perceive the vastness, complexity and uniqueness of the Datini Archive.

IN DATINI’S TIMES

Besides two great boilers, the room was equipped with everything necessary for cooking: saucepans, tin plates and dishes, a grater, two stone mortars and pestles, ladles, two perforated metal ladles, knives, chopping boards, one of which for chestnut cake. There were also basins for washing one’s hands and feet, another for the barber and a brass container for watering horses, two bowls for washing dishes, a laundry sink and a soap sieve.

From the inventories it appears that in the upper part of the kitchen there was an area where the errand boys slept; linen and various other objects were also kept there, including two benches that were joined together to form a bed, a wooden plank with two pallets, chests, pigeon cages and oil jars.

ARTISTIC ASPECTS

Two pictorial fragments are conserved on the walls of the room: one from the three theological Virtues in the pictorial cycle in the loggia, the other from the cycle of Illustrious Men in the courtyard.