Teatro Farnese

Hidden on the first floor of the Palazzo della Pilotta, the vast brick complex built for the Farnese dukes of Parma, is one of the strangest and most beautiful rooms in Italy. The Teatro Farnese fills a hall about 87 metres long and 22 metres high. A steep U-shaped cavea of fourteen wooden tiers, once able to seat around three thousand people, rises towards two superimposed rows of Serlian arches, and at the far end opens a deep stage behind a monumental proscenium. Everything is made of wood, Friulian spruce, and was originally coated in painted stucco to imitate marble. The effect is of a colossal classical theatre built, astonishingly, out of timber.

Duke Ranuccio I Farnese ordered it in 1618 to impress Cosimo II de' Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was expected to pass through Parma. The architect was Giovan Battista Aleotti, known as l'Argenta, who drew on the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza and the theatre at Sabbioneta; it is one of just three Renaissance theatres to survive in Italy. The Grand Duke's journey was cancelled, and the hall waited ten years for its first performance, on 21 December 1628, for the wedding of Ranuccio's son Odoardo to Margherita de' Medici. The spectacle had music by Claudio Monteverdi, and at its climax the floor of the cavea was flooded for a mock naval battle. Such productions were so expensive that the theatre was used only a handful of times more, the last in 1732.

Then it slowly decayed, and on 13 May 1944 an Allied bombing raid wrecked it almost completely. Between 1956 and 1960 it was rebuilt from the original drawings, reusing the salvaged pieces; the timber roof trusses overhead are post-war. Some original elements survived, including the plaster equestrian statue of Duke Alessandro Farnese on a high pedestal. Today the theatre forms the grand entrance to the Galleria Nazionale, and occasionally it is used again for concerts and opera. Many historians regard it as one of the first theatres built with a permanent proscenium arch, the frame through which Western audiences have watched plays ever since.

Getting there

The Pilotta stands in the centre of Parma, about 0.6 km from the city's central point, a prosperous Emilian city famous for its ham, cheese and opera. Parma Airport (PMF) is about 3.3 km away; larger airports serve Bologna and Milan. Parma station lies on the main Milan–Bologna railway, and the Pilotta is within walking distance of it.