The trains between Parma/Reggio/Modena/Bologna depart every ten minutes, so it's super easy to day trip to the various cities. Today was Parma. Our first stop in our 20K step day was Palazzo Della Pilotta, used to house troops for Duke Ranuccio, but is now home to several museums.
The first museum was archeological. The most notable and impressive item was the Tabula Alimentaria a large bronze tablet that records the contribution to a fund started by the Romans (Trajan) to help small farmers. It was going to be sold for scrap but luckily somebody recognized that it could be important.
Beyond the natural history museum, they have an art museum with (spoiler alert) 100000000000000 paintings of Mary and the baby Jesus. Oddly, none of the Mary and child paintings had baby Jesus in a tuxedo t-shirt. Weird, right?! They did have this fancy pants kid who probably got beat up daily by the other lads.
He might was well we'll have written "de-pants me" on his forehead.
Probably the most impressive thing on the grounds, not involving Trajan, was the Duke's Theatre, built 1618-1619. It was massive, took forever to build and was only used eight times before it sat empty until the 1980s when it under went preservation.
Parma part 2 shortly!
Fancy lad had the last laugh when they did try to de-pants him and it was a onesie...
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