Abbiamo a Parma

September 12, 2018

Witten and Her Bench

For our last day in Lombardy, we decided to leave Lombardy and go to Emilia-Romagna. Parma to be more precise. Everyone has finally caught up with rest, so we got out early and caught the 8:15 train to Parma. It was supposed to take just over an hour, but our train left late and stopped twice - once at a station and once in the middle of nowhere - because of an “on-board technical failure.” Luckily, we didn’t get delayed too much . . . only about 40 minutes. We arrived in Parma just before 10:00, and set out to explore.

Though many parts of Italy were subject to constant regime changes, Parma was one of the hottest potatoes on the peninsula for centuries. It experienced a brief period of independence before the Sforzas (Milan) claimed it and ruled it for many years. In the 14th and 15th centuries, it was the center of the Italian Wars. The French held it from 1500-1521, after which point it belonged to the Papal States until 1545. It was then that Pope Paul III (Farnese), detached it from the Papal States - along with Piacenza - and gave both to his illegitimate son, Pier Luigi Farnese. The Farnese family ruled Parma until the 1730s, when Parma was conquered by Charles I. He left the duchy to his brother Filippo I di Borbone-Parma. The Bourbons ruled Parma from then until 1859, with a 12-year hiatus during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1859, the last member of the House of Bourbon was stabbed, and the people declared the Bourbon dynasty deposed. Parma finally entered the province of Emilia and became part of the Kingdom of Italy.

Parma is famous for many things. It gave the world parmigian cheese and prosciutto, it is home to one of the oldest universities in the world, and it can claim Giuseppe Verdi as its most famous son. I made it to Parma the last time I was in Milan, but not because of the food. Rather, I made the trip to Parma to see the cupola in the Duomo, which was painted by Corregio. To this day, his. Assumption of the Virgin remains one of my favorite works of art, and the perspective he imposed on the dome is masterful.

After passing through some nondescript streets with random shops, we reached the Palazzo della Pilota, an old theater that was destroyed by the Allies bombs in World War II. It would have been an amazing sight to see back in the day, but now is home to little more than a low-rent Italian street market selling crummy clothes to locals. From there, we set out to find the more picturesque parts of the town and walked down a number of quaint cobblestones streets with great little stores. We found an awesome little kid’s bookstore that Witten just adored. I think that if it was up to her, we would have stayed in there coloring on their little table for most of the day. Alas, we had a number of places to go and didn’t have the time to waste.

The primary reason for going to Parma (besides the food), was to see the Duomo and the Batistero. Neither disappointed. From the outside, the Duomo is nice, but not exceptional. The inside, however, is phenomenal (particularly Corregio’s dome, which is as magnificent as I remember). I hadn’t made in into the baptistery last time - mostly because I often avoided going into places that cost money, and the outside was spectacular enough. They had to stop construction on the baptistery a few times because the rare pink marble that they imported from Verona became temporarily impossible to get. The inside of the baptistery was pretty cool, but also somewhat dilapidated. I’m glad that we went inside, but I prefer the outside. Unfortunately, they were also doing some restorations on two sides of the octagonal baptistery, so the we didn’t get to see it in its full splendor. Our tickets to the baptistery also got us into the cathedral’s museum, which was really neat (for me). I don’t know how much everyone else appreciated it because the explanatory signs were all in Italian, but I could get enough to understand what most of the artifacts were with some level of detail.

Lunch at Enoteca Fontana

By the time we finished going through the museum, it was 11:00 and everyone was hungry, so we set off to find somewhere to eat. I initially thought that we’d hit up the Salameria Garribaldi (a famous salami shop), so we struck off for it, only to find that it was far too small and didn’t really offer any “eat right here” options. Ultimately, we decided to walk back to almost exactly where we had started - a decision that I caught a lot of flack for. It was, however, the right call. We found a great place called Enoteca Fontana. They had great local wines and some really good panini. Most of us stuck with the local specialties - salami, prosciutto, speck. My mom, however, went for a roast beef panino (with parmaggiano cheese, of course). Everything was excellent.

After lunch, we decided that we wanted to taste the variety of local meats and cheeses, so we ended up at a small digusteria. We got a bottle of Emilia-Romagna Spumante, a large cheese plate, and an even larger meat plate. It was absolutely incredible, but everyone was so full afterward that we needed to take a bit of a walk before deciding what to do next. On our walk we decided . . . to get gelato. It worsened my fullness, but was totally worth it! After stopping in a small, somewhat secluded church, we decided to catch an earlier train back to Milan, so we headed back toward the train station. On the way, we stumbled into a really odd place - a puppet museum. We wouldn’t have walked in had it not been free, but it was really creepy, and I’m glad that we did.

Our trip back to Milan was uneventful besides the heat. I’ve never been on a train that was that hot. I don’t know what the problem was, but it was like we were riding in an oven, and we were all drained when we got back to Milan. So much so that we decided to stop in the Burger King and Centrale to get a rare ice-cold Coke.

The evening was very low-key. We stopped at a small cafe near our hotel because Witten and Callie were hungry (nobody else was). My dad ordered a plate of prosciutto and melon, which was perfect for us. Afterwards, I hit up the nearby supermarket to grab a bottle of wine and a bottle of water, and we sat out in the lobby near our rooms drinking wine (Inferno) and relaxing while Witten fell asleep. It was exactly the kind of night I needed, particularly before a big travel day. Tomorrow we head out to Liguria and Cinque Terre!