Parma, a small provincial town in northern Italy, is world famous for its cheese, its ham, and for the fragrant flowers known as ‘Parma violets’ that lend their name to an aromatic British sweet and a perfume. Its 16th-century cathedral has a dazzling dome painted by Correggio, a master of illusionistic perspective, showing swirling sensuous figures surrounding the Assumption of the Virgin. Next to the cathedral, there is the magnificent octagonal, four-tiered baptistery with open loggias clad in pink marble, one of the most important early Gothic buildings in the peninsula. The celebrated composer Giuseppe Verdi was born within the Duchy of Parma, and music-lovers make a pilgrimage to his birthplace at Busseto, a short distance away. In addition to this surfeit of delicious enticements for all the senses, Parma is also the home of one of the largest museum complexes in Italy: the remarkable Complesso monumentale della Pilotta. This has recently undergone a major renovation that was meant to be completed in 2021 for the celebrations surrounding Parma’s stint as Italy’s capital of culture for 2020-2021, but was instead inaugurated in 2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Pilotta’s sprawling historic buildings were originally the work of the Farnese, Parma’s ruling family and great art collectors (and the fitting subject of a temporary exhibition at the Pilotta complex last year). Already a wealthy and influential family of northern Lazio, the Farnese’s great period of prominence began when Alessandro Farnese (1468-1549) became Pope Paul III in 1534. A profoundly cultured man (he had frequented in his youth the scholarly entourage of Lorenzo il Magnifico in Florence) and a generous patron, Alessandro also carved out of the papal dominions in northern Italy the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza for his own family. These domains remained in Farnese hands until the family died out in the 18th century.
The Pilotta palace complex – named after the ballgame of pelota, played on special occasions in one of its three courtyards – was begun around 1583 as an oversize addition to the Farnese residence across the river, the Palazzo del Giardino. It was built on a gigantic scale: its tall, severe brick buildings are intricately interconnected and occasionally decorated with blind arches. They were built over several centuries by different architects, with periods of relative neglect alternating with renewed splendour.
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