Marie Louise, the Duchess who made Parma

Marie Louise was born in Vienna on December 12, 1791. In 1810, aged 18, she was married to Napoleon: by proxy in Vienna on March 11, then in a civil ceremony at Saint-Cloud on April 1. Their son, Napoleon Francis, was born on March 20, 1811 and styled King of Rome.

When Napoleon fell in 1814 she did not follow him to Elba; she went home to her father. At Vienna, Britain, France and Spain resisted giving Parma to a Bonaparte. The compromise was a life tenure: the duchies would return to the Bourbons after her death, and her son was not allowed to come to Italy. He grew up in Vienna and died there in 1832.

She left for Italy on March 7, 1816, with Count Adam von Neipperg at her side. Her first stop was the ducal palace at Colorno, which became her summer residence. You can tour it today: the Reggia di Colorno is 16 minutes from Parma by train, €2.70 each way.

Her first major work was practical. The bridge over the Taro, designed by the ducal engineer Antonio Cocconcelli, was begun in 1816 and inaugurated on October 10, 1819, after floods stopped the work more than once. She ordered a second bridge over the Trebbia on May 22, 1819; it opened in June 1825. In a letter of October 1819 she wrote that these bridges and some charitable institutions were the only monuments she wished to leave.

She built more than that. The main works, as recorded by her biographers and by the institutions themselves:

• 1817: a maternity institute and university obstetrics clinic, opened in September.
• 1821: the Conservatorio di Parma, where Arturo Toscanini later studied.
• 1821 to 1829: the new ducal theater, today's Teatro Regio, by the court architect Nicola Bettoli. It opened on May 16, 1829 with Bellini's Zaira, written for the occasion. The premiere was a failure and the opera ran for eight performances.
• 1823: a new crypt for the Farnese dukes in Santa Maria della Steccata.
• 1829: the three sundials on the Palazzo del Governatore, on Piazza Garibaldi.
• In the Pilotta, she arranged a library, an archaeological museum and the picture gallery that became the Galleria Nazionale. The library extension was finished in 1834.

The theater's drop curtain, painted by Giovan Battista Borghesi, shows her at the center as Minerva. Guided tours of the Regio cost €12 and last about 30 minutes.

The nickname has a basis, and a limit. On the credit side, when cholera reached the duchy in June 1836 she visited the sick, and she melted down the silver-gilt toilet set Paris had given her for her wedding to Napoleon, raising 125,000 francs. The epidemic ended that September after 438 deaths, according to her biographers.

On the other side, she did not really govern alone. Policy came from Vienna through ministers the Austrian court sent: first Neipperg, whom she married in secret in 1821, then Baron Josef von Werklein and, from 1833, Charles-René de Bombelles, whom she married, also in secret, on February 17, 1834. In February 1831 crowds in Parma demanded a constitution and Werklein's removal. She left the city on the night of February 14 to 15, Austrian troops restored order, and she returned on August 8. On September 29, 1831 she proclaimed an amnesty rather than trying the leaders.

Her two children with Neipperg, Albertine and William, could not inherit. Albertine married Count Luigi Sanvitale of Fontanellato, which is how many of her belongings reached the museum that now holds them.

Parma's violet is tied to her in every souvenir shop. What a public source confirms is narrower: the Emilia-Romagna Region's museum register says the Parma perfumer Borsari, founded in 1870 by Lodovico Borsari, created its "Violetta di Parma" scent inspired by Marie Louise. That is 23 years after her death, so the perfume is a tribute, not something she wore.

We could not verify current perfume prices or the hours of the Borsari collection, and we name no shop for candied violets. Our Violetta di Parma page has what we could confirm.

Start with the Lombardi museum, because it explains everything else. It closes at 4 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday, so go in the morning and walk 350 m to the Pilotta afterward; the Pilotta is open until 7 p.m. and also closed on Mondays. Each December the museum runs a Settimana di Maria Luigia, a week of events around the dates of her birth and death.

She died in Parma on December 17, 1847, five days after her 56th birthday; her doctor recorded pleurisy. As the Congress had decided, Parma and Piacenza passed to the Bourbon Charles II and Guastalla to Francis V of Modena. Her body went to Vienna and lies in the Imperial Crypt of the Capuchin church, not in Parma.

The city kept her name on the boarding school she founded by merging two colleges, today the Convitto Nazionale Maria Luigia. Verdi dedicated I Lombardi alla prima crociata to her. To hear the house she built in full voice, see our page on an opera night at the Regio.