Visit Parma, art and gastronomy capital with Vip Limousine

Parma, Italian Capital of Culture 2020: a city rich of history, cradle of Medieval art and a UNESCO Creative City for its enogastronomic tradition!

Asking yourself what to see in Parma means to understand the charm of a city that has really a lot to offer and our Vip Limousine Luxury Car Rental with Driver in Milan team decided to show you its splendour!

Its squares and the streets of its historical centre are rich of buildings, churches and monuments, showing an incomparable artistic and cultural vitality, that has been expressing itself in centuries of history.

Vip Limousine Luxury Car Rental with Driver in Milan takes care of short, medium and long-distance transfers, offering full service luxury car rental with drivers. If you come from another city, don’t worry, Vip Limousine guarantees also services as Transfers from and to Milan’s train station and transfers from and to Milan’s airports Milano Malpensa, Milano Linate or Bergamo Orio al Serio.

Italian Capital of Culture 2020, Parma is a little provincial city with great excellences: musical ones with Verdi and Toscani; artistic ones with Correggio and Parmigianino; culinary with typical products as the Parmigiano Reggiano. Next to this famous splendours there are many others, probably less known, but just much important, and we invite you to experience them.

Parma is one of the most important and renowned Italian capitals for our gastronomy: eating is surely one of the best things you could do in the Emilian city, because food quality here is actually unattainable.

But Parma offers also museums and theatres at European level, historical monuments and attractions making it a perfect city of art for a short weekend! This is why our Vip Limousine Luxury Car Rental with Driver in Milan team will be happy to accompany you discovering this wonderful city on board of our new and comfortable luxury cars with driver!

Piazza del Duomo

Among the places to visit in Parma certainly Cathedral of Parma is the most important and so it is the starting point of our personalised tour. The Santa Maria Assunta Cathedral and the near Baptistery are some of the most important masterpieces of the Romanic architecture in Italy, while the surrounding historical buildings give to it a suggestive and harmonious aspect.

Parma’s Cathedral was consecrated in 1106, just in the high Middle Ages, and today is still considered one of the most beautiful architectural works in Romanic style of Italy. Inside is kept the Deposizione dalla Croce – a famous Medieval sculptural work made by Benedetto Antelami, and the inner frescos were made by the painter Correggio during the early Renaissance.

During the 19th century the Cathedral of Parma obtained the pontifical recognition as Minor Basilica.

Parma’s Baptistery

The Cathedral of Parma is not the only Medieval monument present in the square: just next to it you can admire the Baptistery, another important Medieval artwork. Many consider it as it’s making the bridge between Romanic and Gothic art.

The architecture of Parma’s Baptistery has an octagonal plan and this is not casual since the octagon is the symbol of eternity. In the place where it raises, flowed a brook that nourished the big inner Baptismal font.

The exterior of Parma’s Baptistery is made of pink marble from Verona, decorated with a “zooforo”, a big ring with real and fantastic animals. All the exterior is a image tale: Jesus’, Mary’s and Baptist’s life, death and resurrection, as the decorations of the inner cupola tell about Jerusalem after the end of the world, with the Apostles and the Evangelists. An unmissable masterpiece!

Palazzo Vescovile

The last protagonist of Piazza del Duomo of Parma is Palazzo Vescovile, today location of the Diocese of Parma and also of the Museo Diocesano. Among the most important elements, we mention the interior court yard and its Renaissance portico with columns in sandstone.

Palazzo Pilotta

Not far from Piazza del Duomo of Parma is located Palazzo della Pilotta that allows you to visit two masterpieces together: Teatro Farnese and Galleria Nazionale, with artworks by Beato Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Guercino, El Greco, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Van Dick and many others.

Palazzo della Pilotta of Parma is a monumental complex which construction started in 1583 by Ottavio Farnese, who wanted it just as an extension to the near Palazzo Ducale.

The first part to be built was a “Corridore” connecting with a court yard, where Spanish soldiers often played "Pelota", from where comes its name. Pelota, in Spanish means "ball" and indicates a team game born in the Basque region: it’s played with a rubber ball with a diameter of 5 cm that is thrown and got back through a wicker basket.

Over the course of decades, to this first section was added other spaces where to host the rich collection of books and artworks of the Farnese family. You can get to the higher floors through the Scalone Monumentale built on the example of the Escorial in Madrid.

Nowadays Palazzo Pilotta of Parma hosts: the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, the Teatro Farnese, the Biblioteca Palatina, the Galleria Nazionale and the Museo Bodoniano.

Il Teatro Farnese

In the Pilotta complex there is a theatre that became since the beginning an example all around the world: Teatro Farnese was built between 1616 and 1618 following the will of the Duke Ranuccio I Farnese to celebrate Cosimo II de' Medici’s stop in Parma.

For the age when it was built, the theatre is an example of creativity and technique: the scenic equipment was movable, the characters could be lowered from above and an ingenious system was contrived for the scenic flooding of the cavea.

But all this grace wasn’t very useful: the Farnese family, in fact, used the Teatro Farnese of Parma only 9 times, always as private space and never opening it to the public. So there was few representations and moreover, of poor quality.

Teatro Farnese however never remained empty and silent: during and the 18th and the 19th century the pilgrimage of princes, artists, intellectuals and show men was incessant (from Montesquieu, to de Brosses and Dickens) that rested in Parma just to admire it. In their travel diaries they give an ample testament and repeatedly regret the condition of absolute decline in which they find the hall: the broken and rotted wood, the ripped painted canvases, the faded colours, the spots, the filth and the disorder, even the rats, lords of the field, as indignant underlines Dickens.

It’s just in 1953 that starts the restoration work of the Teatro Farnese of Parma: after the first urgent interventions, as the remake of the vault collapsed under the bombs, started the reconstruction if the architectural structure that was completed in 1962, thanks also to the ability of local expert carpenters who worked with ebony that permitted to reuse a big part of the original woods of the Farnese.

What to eat in Parma

Parma is a fantastic city for many reasons; after talking about places and monuments of artistic interest, now it’s time to discover the specialities of its enogastronomic tradition!

If we think about food in Parma, the first thing we think of is the Prosciutto crudo DOP famous all around the world; but this is just one of the cold cuts that this part of the Po Valley donated us. Few kilometres away from Parma you can visit Zibello, where was born the famous “culatello”, the finest of the many types of prosciutto!

Thanks to its culinary products, Parma obtained from the UNESCO the recognition of a Creative City, an award won by not many other cities in Italy.

Let’s see which are the typical dishes that you should absolutely try in this tour of Parma, that you could enjoy on board of one of our luxury cars with driver.

The typical products of Parma’s gastronomy are:

• The Parmigiano Reggiano, one of the most representative dairy products of Italian cuisine;
• The Prosciutto crudo of Parma, slightly salted and ideal to be tasted with the local bread;
• The durum wheat semolina pasta, stuffed and not, known already in the 16th century and imported in the tables of all the Northern Italy families: typical are the Anolini and the Cappelletti.

One of the typical dishes of Parma’s tradition is the Risotto al Lambrusco, with a red wine produced on the local hills with an intense taste. The risotto is often accompanied with a really tasty Parmigiano cream.

Other two typical wines of the area of Parma are the Malvasia dei Colli di Parma, a table or sweet wine, that could be still or semi-sparkling and the Fortanina, another tasty wine, typical of the territory of Parma and difficult to be found in our restaurants because of its limited quantity of certified production and also because of its upper middle cost.

You have just to choose the dish to try and our Vip Limousine Luxury Car Rental with Driver in Milan team will bring you there to taste it!

Visit Parma with Vip Limousine!

Vip Limousine is a Luxury car rental with driver in Milan company that plans and organises any kind of itineraries on board of our luxury vehicles with driver and luxury minibuses with driver. It offers various tours based on clients’ desires and on its own experience over the past 40 years: the best places to visit, the best restaurant where to eat and the best hotels where to stay.

Each side of your luxury tour with driver will be planned in detail by Vip Limousine’s offices located in the centre of Milan and operating every day, on a 24-hour basis, in order to make unforgettable your short or long holiday.

If you want to find some starting points or ideas for your holiday in Milan or elsewhere you desire to be accompanied with our luxury vehicles with driver, we suggest you to have a look at the section with all our Car rental with driver in Milan services.

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