Every trip there is a place that surprises us. We may have vaguely heard of it, or not heard of it at all, but at the end of the day we return to François and realize that we have just experienced something great and unexpected. Parma is one of those places for us.
As is usual when we visit an European city to have google route us from where we are staying to the center of town I put in the cathedral as our destination as it always in the center of the old town. After a short bus ride in a very busy bus we got off at a stop next to the river. It was market day so the walk to the main square was thru bustling streets as people were out looking for bargains. But there are two types of bustling streets, one we like which is when the people who live in the city are out doing daily activities. It is fun to see how life in the city works, and the people of the city go about their lives. Trying not to sound like travel snobs, the other type of bustling we do not like is places full of tour groups being hustled from point to point on three hour tours. We know we are tourists also and from a locals perspective probably just as big a nuisance as the tour groups, but we tend to stay in towns longer, shop in the local groceries as well as eat in the restaurants, and try to see the city we are visiting in more than three hour increments.
The first building that began to make Parma a special stop for us was the Baptisery located next to the Cathedral. As large and imposing as the Cathedral is, as soon as we entered the square both of our eyes were drawn to the Baptisery. It is a six sided tower made of pink marble. As the name implies it was built as the place for baptisms to occur. We have seen a couple of other stand alone baptisteries in other cities, but not one as interesting as this one.
We both circled the exterior of the Baptistery a couple of times before turning to the main building on the square the Cathedral. From the outside the Cathedral was typical Romanesque architecture. While imposing it was not particularly interesting.
But the inside was beautiful. Parma was a center of arts during the middle ages and the art work and frescoes inside were stunning to us. Usually we stay together when we go thru these big religious buildings, but today we tended to be drawn to different pieces of art. We both found different things to focus on, and came away awed by what we saw.
We were truly impressed by the Cathedral and the Baptistery but that was not the highlight of our day. Our next stop was the Farnesene palace or as it is called now the Pilotta Palace. The Farnesene family ruled the Duchy of Parma for about 200 years. Once again the exterior of the palace while quite large is nothing spectacular visually. But what we found inside was spectacular.
There are three distinct places to visit in the palace, a theater that has been in place since 1618, a library and a museum of art. The primary draw is the theater and it was what motivated us to pay the admission fee to see all three.
We started in the theater and it is an incredible room. A huge hall in the original palace was converted into a theater by building a large wooden stand inside the building. In addition to the main stand of wooden benches ther are two levels of boxes each with ornate wood carved arches. It is an amazing place. We would love to see a concert here, but had to settle for a video concert being projected on a screen on the stage. But even though the music wasn’t live we were engrossed. When the video ended we left the hall and entered the area backstage.
When we entered the backstage area we though we would loop around the back and come back out in the theater. But instead, we ended up on a magical two hour tour of Italian art from the 1100’s to modern time.
The tour included over a thousand beautiful paintings, and in addition to just exposing us to great art, it explained to us the different periods of art, and the prominent artists in the region. It was focused on art in the region around Parma, but included art from other parts of Italy. Even for complete novices like us it was a fascinating trip. We were exposed to hundreds of beautiful pieces of art in a way that both educated us on the differences in style and what caused them to come about.
We have been to quite a few museums in our travels to Europe but this one is my personal favorite. It also helped that there was plenty of time to stand in front of a piece of art and enjoy it without the pressure of large crowds of people.
We came across a beautiful portrait by DaVinci that we both loved. Unlike the Mona Lisa we had never heard of this piece of art, but it was fascinating. Also, unlike when we tried to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre we had the painting to ourselves for the entire time we admired it. So after admiring the La Scapaliata by ourselves we had a much better understanding of Da Vinci’s genius than we did trying to glimpse the Mona Lisa thru a crowd of tourists all trying to get a selfie with the painting.
After we finished with the art museum we moved to the library in the palace. It was another fascinating room. The library is about 100 yards long and is lined with old books its entire length.
A large part of the palace was destroyed during WWII by allied bombing. But they were able to preserve a significant portion of the books.
The Pilotta Palace was one of the best museums we have ever visited in Europe. We were truly awed by we had just seen, but we were hungry so lunch was in order. Both places on Tons list were closed and after walking thru the palace and around the streets to the closed restaurants, we were by now really hungry, so as we were walking down the street we saw a Pizza Place and decided that was good. The Pizza while not spectacular did the job.
The day had turned a bit gray while we were in the theater and seeking out lunch, so we decided to head back to the campground. But as we were riding the bus we noticed a Supercenter market for one of the big Italian grocery chains Esselunga. So the end of our day was spent doing some grocery tourism. Ton was quite happy.