Deep-dive

Identity: gastronomy, music and the Pilotta

UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy since 2015 and Italian Capital of Culture in 2020+21. City of Verdi and Toscanini, with the Teatro Regio and the autumn Festival Verdi; the state-run Pilotta complex; a university that dates itself to 962.

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City of gastronomy

Food is part of civic identity: since 2015 Parma has belonged to the UNESCO Creative Cities network for gastronomy, which describes it as the gastronomic centre of the "Italian Food Valley". Pork is the star of local gastronomy, starting with Prosciutto di Parma PDO, alongside Parmigiano Reggiano PDO, Culatello di Zibello PDO, Salame Felino PGI, Spalla Cotta di San Secondo and Fungo Porcino PGI. The presence of EFSA, the European food safety agency, reinforces this profile.

Music and cultural institutions

The city is tied to Giuseppe Verdi and Arturo Toscanini. The Teatro Regio runs a winter opera season and hosts the Festival Verdi, with Verdi operas scheduled between September and October. Parma was Italian Capital of Culture in 2020+21.

The Pilotta monumental complex, an institute of the Ministry of Culture, brings together in the Farnese palace the Teatro Farnese, the Galleria Nazionale, the Biblioteca Palatina, the Archaeological Museum and the Bodoni Museum, and also manages the old San Giovanni pharmacy, Torrechiara Castle and the archaeological area of Veleia.

University

The University of Parma presents itself as "Alma universitas studiorum parmensis A.D. 962" and links its origins to a grant by Emperor Otto I: a history the university calls a thousand years old.