The Farnese dukes built a service citadel and accidentally left Parma one of Italy’s great museum complexes, including a wooden theater where the stalls could be flooded for mock naval battles.
BuiltFrom 1583 by the Farnese dukes as a court-services “citadel”
The showpieceTeatro Farnese (1618), all wood and painted stucco
The paintingsGalleria Nazionale: Correggio, Parmigianino, Leonardo’s La Scapigliata
Also insidePalatine Library (1761), Archaeological Museum, Bodoni Museum
Time needed2–3 hours
Palazzo della Pilotta - Parma, Italia · photo GiorgioGaleotti · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
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Parma · Emilia Romagna
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The Teatro Farnese is the room people remember. Commissioned by Ranuccio I Farnese and designed by Giovan Battista Aleotti in 1618, it is built entirely of wood and painted stucco, with a deep stage engineered for moving scenery, the stalls could even be flooded to stage naumachie, mock naval battles. It wasn't the first permanent theater of the modern age (Vicenza’s Teatro Olimpico came earlier), but it is a milestone of the Italian theater tradition. Bombs nearly destroyed it in 1944. What you see is the faithful postwar reconstruction from the original drawings, which makes the survival part of the story.
The Galleria Nazionale and the other four institutes
Past the theater, the Galleria Nazionale is one of Italy’s important picture collections, strongest on the Emilian school: Correggio, Parmigianino (the Antea and the Turkish Slave), plus Leonardo’s sketch-like La Scapigliata, Canaletto, Tiepolo, Van Dyck, El Greco. The same ticket world includes the Palatine Library with its illuminated manuscripts, the Archaeological Museum with the finds of Roman Veleia, and the Bodoni Museum, dedicated to the printer whose typeface you have used without knowing it. One caveat: the famous Farnese antiquities went to Naples with the dynasty, which is why the MANN feels like the Pilotta’s missing wing.
palazzo della Pilotta · photo Sailko · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Practical
Give the complex a generous half day, combined with the Duomo and Baptistery ten minutes away. Parma’s station is a short walk. Between museums, the food city takes over, culatello, Parmigiano and the trattorias around Via Farini do the rest of the work.
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