Parma Culture

Parma’s opera audience has a fearsome reputation, and it is deserved. The Teatro Regio is one of the houses where a singer can be booed, and the loggionisti in the upper gallery consider judgement a civic duty. Verdi was born in the province, at Roncole, and the Festival Verdi each October is the city’s largest cultural event.

Correggio’s dome in the cathedral, painted between 1526 and 1530, dissolves the architecture into a vortex of figures rising into light. A contemporary is supposed to have called it a hash of frogs; it became one of the most influential ceilings in European art.

The food is the other pillar and is genuinely regulated rather than merely traditional. Parmigiano Reggiano is made from raw milk with no additives, aged a minimum of twelve months, and every wheel is tested by hammer at twelve months; failures lose the right to the name. Prosciutto di Parma is pork, salt and time — nothing else at all — cured for at least twelve months.

Beyond those two: culatello from the misty Po lowlands at Zibello, anolini in broth, torta fritta, and the local habit of ordering a glass of fizzy red Lambrusco or Fortana with a plate of cured meat in the afternoon.