After a long restoration and complete reorganization, the Antica Spezieria di San Giovanni Evangelista is back to the public, having become part of the circuit of the Monumental Complex of the Pilotta since June 2024.
From Sunday 20 October 2024 it will be back to visitors completely restored, with the opening of four new spaces that will be added to the four rooms that could already be visited previously.
There have been several structural and collection interventions aimed, on the one hand, at returning the building to its original conformation thanks to the reopening of the door to the Monastery and, on the other, at adapting its safety and accessibility to modern standards.
The restoration, in particular, involved walls, floors, glass, fixtures and marble, with a chemical-physical investigation of all the systems and a safety of the entire wall structure, suitable to withstand seismic stress. Just as accessibility is now calibrated to break down physical and cognitive barriers, facilitating entry, movement and use of the 400 m2 of exhibition space, also through tactile supports for the visually impaired and olfactory corners designed for a multisensory experience.
The preserved objects, from wooden artefacts to paintings, from mortars to stills, from ceramic material to books, have also been restored and, where possible, digitized.
The exhibition route, which already included the Sala del Fuoco, the Sala dei Mortai, the Sala delle Sirene and the Sala del Pozzo o degli Alambicchi, is now completed with three other rooms (the Sala della Storia, the Sala della Regola, the Sala dei Veleni o del Libro) and with the Corridoio di ingresso or del Monaco. Here the ancient opening onto the Cloister has been restored, a symbolic and practical point of contact with the Monastery and, by extension, with the origins of the pharmacy, whose history began before the year 1000 and, over the centuries, has undergone evolutions and changes.
The restoration and installation of the new museum spaces of the Spezieria was also possible thanks to the contribution of the Cariparma Foundation and the Association “Parma, io ci sto!”
Exhibition itinerary
1 – Sala del Pozzo
The room is part of the old apothecary’s laboratory, which also extended to other rooms on the north side now used for different purposes. Here, where you can admire the 16th century Veronese marble sink, the well and the original walls, the protagonists are the stills, the retorts and the bottles, used for the preparation of medicines.
2 – Sala del Fuoco
Marked by the presence of a large fireplace, now walled up, the wooden furniture and the decorations on the ceiling of the room effectively mask its trapezoidal shape due to its location adjacent to the surrounding wall, while three round arches not supported by columns separate the small entrance hall from the operational one.
3 – Sala dei Dottori dell’Antichità o dei Mortai
The room contains the essential tools of the apothecary, namely mortars, marble or bronze containers in the shape of a cup or vase that were used to crush, with a special pestle, herbs, minerals and dried organic substances.
Twelve lunettes, dating back to around the first half of the sixteenth century, host the portraits of the ancient masters of medicine, belonging to Greco-Roman myth and Arab or Persian science, gathered together in a sort of gallery that leads to reflection on the distant origins of medical practice. Attributed to the Parma native Leonardo da Monchio and dating back to around the first half of the sixteenth century, the work is configured as a tribute to the progress of science with the intent of affirming the lack of geographical or religious boundaries in this field. Starting from the west wall and from left to right, we find Mercury, Apollo, Galen, two unnamed figures, Averroes, Hippocrates, Aesculapius, Aetius, Dioscorides, Avicenna and Mesue.
4 – Sala dei Dottori Parmigiani o delle Arpie
Formerly the Hall of the Sirens, the previous name derives from the figures sculpted in the pilasters of the shelves which, in reality, upon closer inspection can be compared to the image of the harpy, considering the wings and paws equipped with claws.
It is the richest room in ornaments and carvings and displays, within lunettes, twelve portraits of the masters of medicine, who lived between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who contributed significantly to the development of medical science in the Duchy of Parma.
Starting from the left side of the altar there are Scipione Cassola, Filippo Silva, Antonio Massera, Pietro Linati, Paolo Accorsio, Gerolamo Iuncta, Giovanni Cascia, Alberto Urbano Sanseverino, Pompilio Tagliaferri, Andrea Cerati, Flavio Sacco and Tiberio Delfini.
The depiction of such luminaries, in an environment that pursued the same objectives as the characters depicted, accompanied the story of the work of the apothecary monks who every day placed themselves at the service of God but also of science.
5 – Sala della Storia
Here the visitor can learn the history of the Spezieria di San Giovanni Evangelista from the Middle Ages to the present day and explore its spaces from a “bird’s eye view”, together with those of the Monastery and the surrounding area. In the same room are also collected the glasses used by the apothecary, the bust of the pharmacist Ferdinando Gardoni and the portrait, in canonical clothes, of his son Leonida.
6 – Sala della Regola
The space is dedicated to the relationship between the rule of Saint Benedict Ora et labora and the practice of monastic pharmacy, as well as to the fundamental principles that characterise the life of Benedictine monks, whose presence is evoked here by the display of a monastic tunic.
7 – Corridoio di ingresso o del Monaco
In addition to the story of the restoration of the premises of the Spezieria and the pictorial decoration that frames the opening towards the cloister of San Giovanni (or della Porta), the corridor tells the story of the connection between body, health and medicine through the work of the apothecary, exemplified by the inscriptions scattered throughout the rooms and the epigraphs of the ceramic collection. The room closes with a section dedicated to temporary exhibitions and the legacy of the Spezieria in contemporary pharmaceutical Parma.
8 – Sala dei Veleni o del Libro
Inside the small room, where the apothecary kept under lock and key those toxic products that in the wrong hands could be a danger, there are collected the volumes of pharmacy, medicine and botany from the 16th to the 20th centuries. One display case, in particular, hosts a book among these, flanked by the files that represent the ancient pharmaceutical recipe books, while a monitor offers the possibility of digitally exploring the other documents of the Apothecary.
I passaggi dal Monastero alla Spezieria
Over the centuries, the various changes of direction, from religious to secular and vice versa, have imposed structural changes to the building, which have mainly moved along two opposite directions: to guarantee a rapid internal passage between the Monastery and the Apothecary, combined with isolation from the outside, at a time when the laboratory was the exclusive prerogative of the monks; on the contrary, to open a convenient access from the outside to customers and to prohibit the passages towards the Monastery when the pharmacy was managed by lay people.
The latest restoration work brought to light a painted portal, with a richly decorated tympanum and stone jambs, corresponding to the ancient direct access that the Monastery had to the Cloister of San Giovanni, which was blocked in 1897 with the definitive closure of the activity and the start of the various transfers of competence in order to create a new museum reality.
The portal is embellished by the cymatium bearing the date 1748 (MDCCXLVIII), the year in which the large decoration was created, and the inscription Alla morte dolore, dolce e amaro è il conforto (To painful death, sweet and bitter is comfort ), together with a cartouche (painted or sculpted representation of a paper roll, often containing an inscription but sometimes intended for purely ornamental purposes) with a female figure, identified as an allegory of Health, who in her right hand holds the rod of Asclepius (Aesculapius in Roman mythology) and, in her left, a rooster, an animal that was traditionally offered as a sacrifice in thanksgiving by those who recovered from an illness.
Still in the Corridoio di ingresso or the Monaco, recent restorations have revealed the existence of another passage between the Monastery and the Apothecary, closed in the eighteenth century and located in the Sala dei Dottori dell’Antichità or dei Mortai, probably an earlier entrance than the one used in the Sala dei Dottori Parmigiani o delle Arpie. In front of it, originally, there was another door that allowed access to the Monastery’s simple garden, later replaced by the current large window visible upon entering the room.
Gallery
Photo credits: Giovanni Hänninen