Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Around the corner is the entrance to the
Spezeria
(Borgo Pipa, 1;
%
0521-
233309;
€
2; Tues-Sun 8:30am-2pm),
the pharmacy from which the good monks
have supplied Parma with potions and poultices (today, honeys,
ptisans
—an
herbal tea infusion—and beauty products at the cloister entrance) for nearly 700
years. An array of medieval-looking mortars and jars continues to line the shelves.
The grim-looking massive fortress, which the Farnese put up near the banks
of the river Parma in 1603, would be an empty shell if it weren't for Marie-Louise,
the Hapsburg wife of Emperor Napoleon and niece of Marie Antoinette, who
ruled the duchy in the early 19th century. Marie-Louise shared her aunt's passion
for art and, under her guidance, paintings from throughout her domain were
brought here to fill the rooms the Farnese had left empty when Isabella Farnese
assumed the throne of Spain in the 18th century and the clan left Parma for good.
Though Allied bombings came close to flattening the palace in May 1944, much
of it has been rebuilt and continues to house Parma's
Galleria Nazionale
55
(Palazzo della Pilotta, Piazzale Marconi;
%
0521-233309 or 0521-133617; www.
gallerianazionaleparma.it;
€
6, or
€
2 for just the theater; daily 9am-2pm).
You enter the museum through the Teatro Farnese, a wooden jewel box of a
theater that Giambattista Aleotti, a student of Palladio, built for the Farnese in
1618, modeling it after the master's Palladian theater in Vicenza. This was the first
theater in Europe to accommodate moving scenery. Its elegant proportions pro-
vide a warm, intimate atmosphere, and the stage floor slopes, er, dramatically up
and away from the audience. That's to help achieve the illusion of great depth,
helping the set builders force a sense of long perspectives and the actors seem to
bestride the distances like giants. If it looks in too good a shape to be that old, it
is. American bombs destroyed it in 1944, and the current version is a faithful,
painstaking reconstruction carried out from 1956 to 1965.
Though one of the prizes of the museum's outstanding collections is a
Leonardo da Vinci sketch,
La Scapigliata,
the real stars are the works by Parma's
great masters, including Correggio's
Madonna of St. Jerome
and
Rest on the Flight
from Egypt,
and Il Parmigianino's pink-cheeked
Schiava Turca,
along with good
stuff from lesser-known local talents Il Temperelli, Filippo Mazzola, Josaphat and
A Night at the Theater
Parma's opera house, the
Teatro di Regio,
is not too far down the scale of
high regard from Milan's La Scala. After all, Verdi was born nearby and
Arturo Toscanini, who often conducted at the theater, is a native son.
Tickets can be hard to come by because they're swallowed up for the entire
October-to-March season well in advance by opera buffs from across the
region. However, the tourist office sometimes sells standing-room-only
tickets. You should also check the
box office
(
%
0521-039399; www.
teatroregioparma.org)
at Via Garibaldi, 16A, near Piazza della Pace, for
last-minute cancellations.