Day Trios from Bologna - Parma

One of our day trips was to the city of Parma, famous for its eponymous cheese.  But it's also a very old city, with a lot of history.


One of the great sites is the Baptistry, built out of pink marble, and dating back to the 13th century.  It's octagonal on the outside, divided into 16 sides in the interior


                    

The interior is painted with frescoes everywhere:

                  

The ceiling is remarkable:

Next to it is the Duomo, another astonishingly painted church, consecrated in 1178, and painted and redecorated for hundreds if years after.  In fact, I don't think I have ever seen a church that was so painted on every square inch.

The facade:

The interior:
                        

The most famous painting in the church is the ceiling of the dome, painted by Correggio in the 16th century.  It is truly visionary; and certainly is heading towards the Baroque.   It's also confounding, as it is a very high ceiling, and you can't really see it very well.  The work was not appreciated by the church leaders.

A bit closer:

Another highlight of Parma is Palazzo della Pilotta, a hugely enormous edifice built by the Farnese family, rulers of Parma at a certain point.  It was half destroyed during the war.  It includes a number of museums, and the astonishing Teatro Farnese;  a huge theater built very quickly to impress a Medici who was coming to visit.   Alas, he didn't visit, and the theater was barely used.   The interior was made of wood, and was meant for grand spectacles.  It is considered the first purpose-built  theater with a proscenium arch.   It's an impressive space, so big that my camera couldn't take it all in.

The Palazzo has and excellent art museum as well.

I love intarsia:

And while the rest of the world is queuing up to see Leonardo; here was this wonderful drawing in a room with nobody else around;

After visiting all these cities in the Bologna region, I have to say that on the whole, the historic centers of each city are amazingly civilized places to wander in.  Almost all of them have significant areas where cars are not allowed or limited.  The street layout in many cases dates back to medieval or even Roman times.   One also can't help but notice the relative wealth of these cities; it's a prosperous region of Italy, owing to the many industries and other businesses that are located there.  And another thing I learned was of the great extent destruction caused by Allied bombing during WWII; I always think of Germany suffering from massive bombing of cities, but many parts of Northern Italy suffered immensely, and some of what we see today was reconstructed after the war.   (Apparently the Allies thought that bombing of cities would demoralize the Italians, and shorten the war.)