Parma travel guide

Top 10 sights in Parma

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Norbert Nagel · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Parma Cathedral

   A Romanesque cathedral of the twelfth century whose dome Correggio frescoed in the 1520s with the Assumption — a whirl of receding figures that Parma's canons hated and that changed European ceiling painting. Antelami's carved Deposition of 1178 is in the south transept.

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2. 

   2© www.bestofcinqueterre.com · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Teatro Farnese

   A theatre of 1618 built entirely in wood inside a palace hall, and the first with a permanent proscenium arch and moving scenery in flat wings — the ancestor of every modern stage. It was destroyed by bombing in 1944 and rebuilt from the original drawings.

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   Baptistery of Parma

   An octagonal baptistery in pink Verona marble beside Parma's cathedral, begun in 1196 by Benedetto Antelami, who also carved the reliefs of the months around the doors. It stands between Romanesque and Gothic and belongs fully to neither.

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4. 

   4© Sailko · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Galleria nazionale di Parma

   The state gallery in the Palazzo della Pilotta, richest in the Parma masters Correggio and Parmigianino. It also holds Leonardo's head of a young woman known as La Scapigliata, work by Fra Angelico, the Carracci and Canaletto, and shares the palace with the wooden Farnese theatre of 1618.

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5. 

   5© Sailko · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Palazzo della Pilotta

   A complex of buildings the Farnese dukes raised from 1583, now holding the archaeological museum, the national gallery, the Palatine library and the wooden theatre. The name comes from the ball game Spanish soldiers played in its courtyard.

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6. 

   6© CucombreLibre from New York, NY, USA · CC BY 2.0

   Torrechiara Castle

   A castle of the 1450s on a terraced hill above the Parma valley, built by a nobleman for his mistress — the Camera d'Oro inside is painted with their story. It is among the best-preserved fifteenth-century castles in northern Italy.

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7. 

   7© Davide Papalini · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Ducal Palace of Colorno

   The dukes' summer palace at Colorno, remodelled in the eighteenth century in the French manner with over four hundred rooms and a formal garden opening onto the Lombard plain. Napoleon's wife Marie Louise held court in it.

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   San Giovanni Evangelista

   A Benedictine church behind the cathedral apse whose dome Correggio painted in 1520 with St John's vision on Patmos — the work in which he first tried the illusionistic perspective he later used in the cathedral. The monastery pharmacy next door is preserved with its jars.

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9. 

   9© Vitold Muratov · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Steccata

   A Renaissance church of the 1520s on a Greek cross plan with a dome, whose vaults Parmigianino frescoed. The Farnese and Bourbon dukes of Parma are buried in its crypt, and the Constantinian order still holds its ceremonies in it.

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10. 

    10© PATRIZIA PAGANUZZI · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Palazzo del Governatore

    A palace on the main square, refaced in the eighteenth century with a clock and a sundial mounted side by side on the front — the moment when a city's timekeeping changed, left on the building. It now holds exhibitions.

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1. 

   1© Goethe100 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   palazzo del Giardino

   A palace built by the Farnese in the 1560s in the ducal park across the river, with rooms decorated by the painters who worked for the family. It is now a Carabinieri barracks, and the park around it is public.

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2. 

   2© Parma1983 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Museum of Pasta

   A museum of pasta at Collecchio outside Parma, covering wheat, milling, drying and the industrial pasta that this province exports worldwide. It shares a site with the tomato museum, which together make up the food-industry history of Emilia.

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3. 

   3© Pjt56 --- If you use the picture outside Wikipedia I would appreciate a short e- · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Cittadella di Parma

   A pentagonal star fort built by the Farnese at the end of the sixteenth century, on the model of Antwerp's citadel. It never saw a serious siege; the interior is now a public park with a running track round the bastions.

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4. 

   4© Parma1983 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Conservatorio Arrigo Boito

   The Parma conservatory, named after Arrigo Boito — Verdi's librettist and a composer in his own right — and standing in the province where Verdi and Toscanini were both born. Its singing school is why Parma audiences are the most feared in Italy.

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   Fondazione Magnani-Rocca

   A private collection at Mamiano outside Parma, left by Luigi Magnani in his own villa — Dürer, Titian, Goya, Monet and Morandi hung in the rooms he lived in, with a park of peacocks outside. It opened in 1990.

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6. 

   6© Parma1983 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Certosa di Parma

   A Carthusian monastery outside Parma, suppressed under Napoleon and now a police academy. Stendhal borrowed its name for his novel, which is set almost entirely elsewhere and mentions the place only in the last lines.

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7. 

   7© Margheritapollini · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Museum of Tomato

   A museum of the tomato at Collecchio, tracing how this province became the centre of Italian tomato canning from the 1870s, with the machinery, the cans and the labels. It is more interesting than it sounds and pairs with the pasta museum.

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8. 

   8© G. Gabelli · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Museo Glauco Lombardi

   A museum devoted largely to Marie Louise, Napoleon's second wife, who ruled Parma as duchess from 1816 to 1847 and was genuinely popular here. Her dresses, letters and watercolours are shown in a wing of the ducal palace.

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9. 

   9© Geobia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Palazzo del Comune

   The city hall on the main square, built in the seventeenth century after fire destroyed the medieval one, facing the governor's palace across the paving. The two buildings between them are the civic centre of Parma.

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10. 

    10© Parma1983 · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Fontevivo Abbey

    A Cistercian abbey founded in 1142 fifteen kilometres west of Parma, whose monks drained the marshes of this plain and made it farmland. The church and part of the cloister survive on the Via Emilia.

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