Ontdek Parma

Santa Maria della Steccata is a Renaissance church on a Greek-cross plan in central Parma, built from 1521 to house a venerated image of the nursing Madonna; its name recalls the fence (steccato) once put up around the image. Parmigianino painted the frescoes of the arch before the apse, and since 1718 it has been the church of the Constantinian Order of Saint George.

The Teatro Regio di Parma is an opera house opened in 1829 as the Nuovo Teatro Ducale, built for Duchess Marie Louise. Its auditorium has four tiers of boxes topped by a gallery, and it stages an opera season and the Festival Verdi each autumn; guided tours of about 30 minutes show the foyer, the auditorium and the Ridotto.

The Baptistery of Parma is an octagonal building of pink Verona marble beside the cathedral, designed by Benedetto Antelami and built between 1196 and 1216 in the transition from Romanesque to Gothic. Four tiers of open loggias rise above its three sculpted portals, and inside Antelami's reliefs of the Months and Seasons are shown at eye level.

Parma Cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, is a Romanesque church consecrated in 1106, whose sandstone façade with three tiers of loggias was completed in 1178. Inside, the dome carries Correggio's illusionistic fresco of the Assumption, and the transept holds Benedetto Antelami's relief of the Deposition from the Cross, dated 1178.

San Giovanni Evangelista is the church of a Benedictine abbey just behind the apse of Parma Cathedral, rebuilt between 1498 and 1510 to a design by Bernardino Zaccagni. Its marble façade dates from 1604 to 1607 and its bell tower is the tallest in Parma; inside, Correggio painted the dome fresco of the Vision of St John on Patmos.

Teatro Farnese is a wooden court theatre on the first floor of the Palazzo della Pilotta, built in 1618 by Giovan Battista Aleotti for Duke Ranuccio I Farnese and inaugurated in 1628. Nearly destroyed by bombing in 1944, it was rebuilt and reopened in 1962. Visitors walk through its horseshoe of tiered wooden seating below a painted loggia.

The Palazzo della Pilotta is a large brick palace complex begun around 1583 for the Farnese dukes of Parma and never completed; its name comes from the ball game pelota once played in its courtyards. As the Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta it houses the National Gallery, the Archaeological Museum, the Palatine Library, the Bodoni Museum and the Teatro Farnese.