The best museums Emilia-Romagna

Built in 1564 by Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, the palace is now the headquarters of the gendarmerie. The park, once the private property of the dukes, is the main green space for the inhabitants. Its large central avenue leads to a pond. Its current appearance is the result of major redevelopment work (until the 1960s, cars could cross it). In the middle of summer, people come here to take a breath of fresh air among the hundred-year-old trees.

An ancient place of worship of the Arians, a heresy that claimed that the nature of Christ was not completely divine. Built under Theodoric in the 6th century, the building has an octagonal shape with absidioles. Like the other monuments, it has beautiful mosaics, including a Baptism of Christ in its dome. Arianism, a theological doctrine condemned at the first Council of Nicaea in 325 and qualified as heresy, continued to impose itself in the East and among the Germanic peoples until the 6th century.

Since 1830, the museums of the city have been gathered in this palace. The Archaeological Museum contains Roman mosaics, medieval figurative pavements from the Duomo and other churches in Reggio, marbles, Etruscan material and a section on Prehistory, including a Neolithic Venus. The palace also houses a natural history museum, an ethnographic museum, a museum of the history of the city (which includes industrial architecture) and an art gallery exhibiting paintings by local painters (15th-20th centuries).

The collection of this museum is made up of the rich collection of puppets, puppets and stage sets by Giordano Ferrari, a renowned Parmesan puppeteer. Housed in the former Convent of St. Paul, it covers an area of 300 ^m2 and houses the largest collection of puppets in Italy (500 pieces from the late 18th to mid-20th centuries), from various origins, including Fagiolino, the Emilian equivalent of Guignol.