The National Archaeological Museum of Parma is one of the oldest museums in Italy: established in 1760 to house the precious material from the excavations of the Roman city of Veleia, it has been enriched over more than two centuries with the acquisition of Egyptian, Etruscan and Roman materials, but above all it has been a point of reference for archaeological research in the Duchy since its foundation. In fact, it exhibits the finds from scientific excavations conducted during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries throughout the Parma area, revealing to visitors the history of the area from the Paleolithic to the Early Middle Ages.
History
From the origins to the end of the eighteenth century
The National Archaeological Museum of Parma was established as the Ducal Museum of Antiquities on 20 September 1760 by Don Filippo di Borbone a few months after the start of research on the site of the Roman town of Veleia (PC); for northern Italy it constitutes the first (and long isolated) example of a museum created in relation to an archaeological enterprise. The first years of excavation at Veleia are rich in extraordinary finds: to the Tabula Alimentaria, actually already discovered in 1747 and the starting point for the start of the excavations, are added another bronze table with part of the Lex de Gallia Cisalpina, figurative bronzes, marble finds, furnishings of all kinds, coins and, above all, twelve marble statues depicting, larger than life-size, the members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The statues, however, were delivered to the newly founded Academy of Fine Arts to serve for the training of new artists and did not arrive at the Museum until 1866.
After the first excavation campaigns, the finds at Veleia decreased and the activities were suspended.
The enrichment of the Museum continues above all through the acquisition of collections of coins and medals, the first nuclei, together with the coins from Veleia, of what is still today one of the richest medal collections in Italy.
From the early nineteenth century to the unification of Italy
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, some valuable marbles, such as a colossal head of Zeus, belonging to the Farnese and Gonzaga collections, were recovered from the Ducal Arsenal (Warehouse) and exhibited; however, the basanite colossi depicting Dionysus and Hercules, also owned by the Farnese, were placed in the Gallery due to their size.
In this first half of the century, as a result of the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt and the discovery of the Etruscan necropolis, almost all museums organized themselves to acquire finds from distant civilizations. Thanks to the funds granted by the ducal government, governed since 1816 by Duchess Maria Luigia, Napoleon’s wife, the director of the Museum, Michele Lopez, was able to purchase numerous finds destined to constitute the Egyptian collection (together with that of the Civic Museum of Bologna, the most representative in the region) and that of Greek and Italiot ceramics of various origins, a good example of Mediterranean production between the 9th and 3rd centuries BC. Of the years of Luigino’s government, however, it is worth remembering above all the rule issued in 1817, which established that the ancient objects discovered “in Velleja and in any other point of our Dominj” should be delivered to the Museum; such finds are defined as being of “general utility…as sources of public education, from which any of the subjects is allowed to draw useful knowledge…”. Thanks to the numerous works carried out in the city between 1815 and 1847, the Roman theatre, the amphitheatre and large sections of the ancient urban fabric were discovered.
In the early years of the unification of Italy, Pellegrino Strobel, geologist and professor at the University of Parma, and Luigi Pigorini, then a student of classical antiquities and a volunteer at the Museum, began, in close collaboration, an intense season of research on the remains of settlements scattered throughout the Emilian countryside, which they soon identified as Bronze Age villages and decided to name “terramare”; with the joint work of these two scholars and the priest from Reggio Gaetano Chierici, prehistoric archaeology originated in Italy. The field research and the commitment to transfer to the museum “what others had recovered as objects of curiosity” led to the creation of a collection of prehistoric materials among the most important not only at a national level, but probably at a European level. After Lopez’s retirement, Pigorini was entrusted with the direction of the Museum.
From the end of the 19th century to the second post-war period
After Pigorini moved to Rome, the role of director was entrusted to Giovanni Mariotti. During his very long direction (1875-1933), the most disparate materials flowed into the museum, either as gifts or deposits from private individuals and institutions: ethnographic finds, sculptures, ceramics, medieval, Renaissance and later furniture were thus packed and put on display in overcrowded rooms.
The museum came to occupy 26 rooms, fifteen on the first floor and eleven on the ground floor; in a decidedly incongruous path, rooms or groups of rooms with archaeological finds (bronze, terracotta, stone artefacts) alternate with others displaying wooden wardrobes or furniture, ceramic and bronze furnishings, tapestries dating from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century, while on the ground floor the rooms dedicated to Latin inscriptions, prehistoric finds, ethnographic collections lead to those with majolica stoves, Renaissance ceramic collections, Murano glass, late medieval armour.
At the end of the 1930s, the new director, Giorgio Monaco, made the first modest interventions on this layout, replacing the wooden display cabinets with display cases specifically made for the exhibits; he then took credit for having secured, during the Second World War, the museum’s main works, including the statues of Veleia, buried in the garden and thus saved from the bombings.
At the end of the 1950s, a decision was made to radically restructure the Museum, with structural interventions, but above all to bring the Institute back to its true role, that is, a place of conservation, protection and exhibition of the finds discovered in the area and the collections of antiquities acquired in previous decades. The work was carried out quickly between 1964 and 1965 and the Museum reopened completely reorganized, with changes to the spaces and new display cases designed by the architect Leone Pancaldi. The ethnographic collections were transported to the warehouse, the medieval and modern materials were entrusted to the Superintendence of Artistic and Historical Heritage, the museum layout was scaled down with the allocation of some spaces to a library, offices and restoration laboratories.
The first floor is reserved for the eighteenth-nineteenth century collection materials, including the marble statuary of the Gonzaga and Farnese collections, the finds from Veleia, the Egyptian collection and that of Greek and Magna Graecia vases. The staircase located near the entrance is eliminated and replaced with a newly built one located at the junction between the eighteenth-century building and the new hall inaugurated in 1927 overlooking the Lungoparma. The ground floor is dedicated to the finds, dating from prehistory to the early Middle Ages, made in the city and in the provincial territory.
The 21st Century Re-Staging
The exponential growth of archaeological finds, which has occurred since the 1980s and even more recently with the good practice of preventive archaeology, has made available a quantity of finds and an improvement in knowledge such as to require the enrichment and revision or updating of what is exhibited and documented. The prehistoric section was enriched and updated in 2010 thanks to the many discoveries made under the scientific direction of Maria Bernabò Brea, discoveries that completed the picture of the prehistoric population in western Emilia from the Paleolithic to the end of the second millennium BC; in 2013 a large exhibition was set up dedicated to the equally recent and innovative discoveries on the population of the Iron Age. The reorganization of the Roman part was in the planning phase when the Monumental Complex of the Pilotta was established with the incorporation of all the Institutes present within it.
The director in charge, Simone Verde, has started a major renovation project, which was concluded in 2023 with the reopening of the museum; the new itinerary, arranged chronologically starting from the Paleolithic and ending in the early Middle Ages, winds in a circular fashion exclusively on the first floor. The West wing, corresponding to the large space created by Mariotti and the rooms previously home to the library and offices, has been allocated to the extra-territorial collections, consisting of pottery and other Greco-Etruscan materials, coins, and Egyptian finds.
Bibliography
Scavi a Veleia. L’archeologia a Parma tra Settecento e Ottocento, Anna Maria Riccomini, Bologna, CLUEB, 2005
Complesso monumentale della Pilotta: il medagliere
Vol.1 Storia e documentazione, edited by Serafina Pennestrì, with the collaboration of M.Cristina Burani e Marco Podini, Roma, MiBACT, 2018
Vol.2 L’inventario del tesoro: dalle raccolte ducali alle vetrine virtuali del Portale numismatico dello Stato, edited by di Serafina Pennestrì, with the collaboration of Marco Podini, Roma, MiBACT, 2018
“…le terremare si scavano per concimare i prati…” La nascita dell’archeologia preistorica a Parma nella seconda metà dell’Ottocento, edited by Maria Bernabò Brea and Angela Mutti, Parma, Artegrafica Silva, 1994
Guida al Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Parma, edited by Mirella Marini Calvani, Ravenna, Edizioni Essegi e Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell’Emilia Romagna, 2001
Parma. Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta. I capolavori, edited by Simone Verde and M. Cristina Quagliotti, Cinisello Balsamo (MI), SilvanaEditoriale, 2020
