The part of the building built between the 19th and 20th centuries is finally reopened to the public, revealing treasures and spaces never seen before: the “ Ceramics Room ” dominated by a majestic coffered ceiling hidden from view in the 1950s by an enormous concrete floor and now meticulously restored, the Egyptian Rooms , created in imitation of the underground tombs of the pharaohs, transforming areas previously used as offices into museum spaces. All for a unique and spectacular journey through the antiquarian collections of the Duchy of Parma, dedicated to the acquisitions of antiquities from all over the world and not from the territory, which took place between the 18th and 20th centuries.
Under the direction of Simone Verde , since 2017 the Monumental Complex of the Pilotta, one of the most important institutions in Europe that extends over approximately 40,000 square meters of exhibition space in the heart of Parma, has been the subject of a titanic restoration, reconception and reorganization project financed by funds from the Ministry of Culture. Between 2018 and 2021, approximately 10 new sections were opened, including the Sala del Trionfo, dedicated to the decorative arts, the Ala Farnese, dedicated to art in Parma in the 16th century, the Ala ovest, dedicated to Italian painting from its origins to 1500, the Rocchetta with its 19th century and the Myth of Correggio , a new and very important piece is now added with the Ala Nuova of the Archaeological Museum, a prefiguration of the total renovation of the antiquities collections planned in approximately nine months. A titanic work, as mentioned, which will be concluded in 2022 and which will see in the exhibition on the Farnese Collections its highest celebration since this exhibition, bringing back to Parma the masterpieces from which the city’s collections were born at the same time as the conclusion of the ongoing construction sites, will celebrate the rebirth and rebirth of the immense Palace and its treasures.
There are many stages to come on the road to the conclusion of this project: after the Christmas opening of the New Wing, in January the new Bodoni Museum is scheduled to open, the oldest European museum of printing, located in the heart of a brand new wing of the Palatina Library designed by Guido Canali and obtained through the closure and redevelopment of a spectacular three-nave portico that had been extremely degraded until now; in February the inauguration of the West Wing and the North Wing – occupied by the Gallery – completely renovated, which will host a brand new section on Flemish painting, the works of which, about fifty, have been largely restored and will be put in relation to the mannerist art of the duchy, as well as the rooms dedicated to Italian and European painting of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; finally, at the end of March, the opening of the exhibition on the Farnese collections which will mark the final phase that will lead to the general inauguration of the New Pilotta.
The New Wing is the result of three parallel construction sites: the creation of a new ceramics room, the creation of a section entirely dedicated to the Egyptian collections of the duchy, gathered in particular under the duchy of Maria Luigia and the restoration of the relevant facades designed by the court architect, one of the most important of European neoclassicism, Ennemond Alexandre Petitot on the Cortile della Cavallerizza.
In the Ceramics Room, the restoration and redevelopment of the mighty, elegant wooden coffered ceiling, the restoration and repositioning of the long wooden table on which the Trionfo da Tavola was displayed, found abandoned in one of the National Gallery’s storage rooms, have made it possible to return to the public, in an appropriate exhibition context, the valuable Greek, Etruscan, Italic and Roman collections of the Museum. The ceramics, purchased in the nineteenth century for the Ducal Museum by the director of the Lopez museum to provide the museum with a sample of Greek and Italic ceramic production, are displayed in a spectacular and unique way, placed individually or in small groups, in chronological order, in glass cases placed on the table, reproducing the original conformation of the room and freely inspired – from an aesthetic and conceptual point of view – by the famous Etruscan Room created in 1855 by Palagio Palagi for King Carlo Alberto of Savoy at the Racconigi Castle.
: The four wall display cases on the north wall display a remarkable sequence of bronzes (a helmet, two jugs, a cista, a winged Victory and two small sphinxes), the Luigine collections of Etruscan-Italic bronzes, terracotta votive offerings and Etruscan mirrors, a Chiusi cinerary urn in terracotta, in a display that enhances the typological characteristics, the themes treated in the depictions, and the decoration techniques. In the centre of the south wall of the room, a fifth display case shines, housing the bas-relief, bottom of a basin, depicting the god Oceanus. Four statues are placed between the five windows overlooking the Lungoparma, while on the opposite side, between the two doors, a head and five busts are placed; the statues and busts, as well as the Roman lions placed at the entrance to the museum, have recently been the subject of a cleaning and restoration project financed by the Lions Club Parma Host.
Continuing the tour, here is the Egyptian Room. The important finds from the Egyptian collection gathered here are accompanied by an informative apparatus that allows you to understand their history, meaning and events. All in an immersive environment that evokes the burial chambers from which these thousand-year-old finds came. Crossing a corridor with a lowered ceiling that alludes to the journey into the belly of the earth that characterizes the necropolis of Luxor, the visitor will find himself inside two rooms where, in specially designed display cases and niches, he will be able to appreciate the funerary objects, the beautiful sarcophagi and the mummy from the Parma collection. Finds for which a restoration intervention conducted on site by specialists, in the presence of visitors, is scheduled shortly.
As for individual documents and finds, the new Egyptian Section opens with some works (texts and plates) by the Egyptologist Ippolito Rosellini, a young colleague of Jean François Champollion during the Franco-Tuscan expedition to Egypt in 1828, financed by King Charles X of France and the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany. The expedition touched all the major sites of Pharaonic Egypt and produced an enormous quantity of documents, copies of hieroglyphic texts, drawings and cases of antiquities. Rossellini first and Champollion’s heirs later published the account of that expedition, accompanying it with large plates, sometimes water-coloured, and the first volumes of the work were donated to the nascent library of the Museum of Antiquities by Duchess Maria Luigia and are now exhibited next to the Amenothes papyrus, acquired by the Museum in 1830.
The redevelopment of the interior spaces of this New Wing corresponds to the remaking and restoration of the external facades, in this case of one of the most important neoclassical facades in Italy as well as the garden it overlooks, created on the ruins of the ancient ducal riding school. A true seal to the recomposition of the new wing which, if it were not for the vastness of the Palace and the Pilotta Complex, could constitute a museum in itself elsewhere.