Parma Events

Parma’s calendar has one major festival and a strong seasonal rhythm driven by food production.

Festival Verdi, October

A month of opera at the Teatro Regio and at Busseto near the composer’s birthplace, staged around Verdi’s birthday on the tenth of October. It draws an international audience to a house with a famously demanding one, and it is the week the city’s hotels are full.

Settembre Gastronomico and the autumn fairs

From September the province runs a sequence of food festivals: the ham festival at Langhirano, the culatello celebrations around Zibello, porcini and truffle fairs in the hills. These are producer events with local audiences rather than staged markets.

Sant’Ilario, 13 January

The city’s patron saint, marked with civic awards and a public holiday. It falls in the deepest part of the fog and is entirely a townspeople’s day.

The production year

Cheese is made every single morning of the year, including Christmas, because the cows are milked every day. Ham curing runs on a twelve-month minimum cycle. Neither is seasonal, which means a producer visit is possible in any month — a rare thing in Italian food tourism.

Book ahead for October; the rest of the year Parma is easy.