Palazzo Pretorio hosts the exhibition dedicated to Federigo Melis and Francesco Datini: a historian and a merchant, two men who lived in very different times, but linked by a thin red thread that runs through seven centuries of economic history and beyond.

You can admire objects, photographic images, documents and films, through a path divided into seven sections, which revolve around the figures of "the historian" (Federigo Melis) and "the merchant" (Francesco Datini).

The exhibition is a long journey through time, a story made up of episodes chosen from documents and objects preserved in public and private collections, as well as in archives and museums in Prato and Florence.

Visitors will be able to see precious clay tablets, examples of accounting dating back to the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, present in the exhibition because Melis was one of the first to study them for the reconstruction of the History of accounting; some accounting registers of the wool mills and of the Bank of Francesco Datini; commercial letters in the many languages ​​present in Datini's documentation.

We can also see letters selected from the extraordinary correspondence that Federigo Melis and Francesco Datini exchanged with their respective wives, Gabriella Forconi and Margherita Bandini. Particularly interesting are the letters that Melis sent to his wife during his imprisonment in Africa.