Parma, ducal city par excellence

Lying between the Po Valley and the Apennines, inhabited by 195 thousand Parma residents, Parma is a municipality rich in art treasures, also known for being the city of opera music: it was in fact the birthplace of the great Arturo Toscanini, and Giuseppe Verdi there was born and lived for a long time. The city was defined by the French writer Stendhal as "land of elsewhere and happiness, and it is here that he set his Charterhouse, considered a masterpiece of nineteenth-century literature. In 2015, UNESCO recognized it with the title of "creative city for gastronomy" and as the first province in Italy in the quality agri-food sector. The homeland of the processing and production of a world-famous product, the flagship of Italian gastronomy: Parmiggiano Reggiano. The journey to discover it can begin from the Palazzo Ducale, with its splendid gardens, with the unmistakable "Parma yellow" colour. It was built in the mid-16th century by Ottavio Farnese based on a design by the architect Vignola. We will retrace the portrait of the Farnese family and Maria Luigia of Austria, wife of Napoleon, where they lived, and we will continue with the history of this important city of Roman origins, built along the axis of the Via Emilia, which experienced a certain prosperity in the Middle Ages but above all it had an extraordinary Renaissance, which culminated with the birth of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, when the city became a real small capital.