Camera di San Paolo

The city announced the project on August 5, 2026. The details:

• Budget: €700,000 in total, €600,000 of it from the Emilia-Romagna Region's culture department.
• Contractor: Montanelli Restauri, a specialist conservation firm, chosen by tender.
• What is treated: the frescoed surfaces, wooden fittings and stonework along the museum route through the apartment of Abbess Giovanna da Piacenza, including Correggio's frescoes of 1518 to 1519 and Alessandro Araldi's of 1514.
• Also closed: the old refectory, later a chapel, with its 17th-century wooden choir, and the Cella di Santa Caterina at the edge of the monastery garden, where Araldi painted the Dispute of Saint Catherine before the Emperor Maximinus, and Saint Catherine with Saint Jerome.

The city describes the works as securing and conserving the decorated surfaces. It has not announced worksite visits.

The Camera was part of the private apartment of Giovanna da Piacenza, abbess of the Benedictine convent of San Paolo, in the early 16th century one of the richest and most influential religious houses in Parma. You pass first through the room painted by Alessandro Araldi in 1514, dense with grotesques. Then you enter the room Correggio painted in 1518 to 1519.

• The vault is an umbrella vault turned into an illusionistic pergola open to the sky. Ribs painted like cane divide it into segments, each with an oval opening where putti play with hunting gear.
• The lunettes below are painted to look like statues in niches, lit from beneath.
• Over the fireplace, Diana rides a chariot drawn by deer. The moon goddess stood for the abbess's chastity and echoed the crescent on her coat of arms.

In 1524 strict enclosure was imposed on the convent and men could no longer enter. The room stayed out of sight for about two centuries, until the painter and critic Anton Raphael Mengs studied it in 1774. It is a small, secular, almost private work, and the contrast with Correggio's vast church domes in San Giovanni and the Duomo is the point. The city calls it one of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.

You can still build a Correggio day in Parma without the Camera:

1. Parma Cathedral: the Assumption dome, free, open 7:45 a.m. to 7:20 p.m.
2. San Giovanni Evangelista: his first dome and the lunette of Saint John, free, open 8:30 a.m. to noon and 3 to 8 p.m.
3. Galleria Nazionale: the Madonna of Saint Jerome, on the €18 Pilotta ticket. Note that his Lamentation is on loan to Dresden from September 19, 2026 to January 10, 2027.

Our Correggio and Parmigianino walk gives the order, and the article on the two painters gives the background.

The city introduced a single ticket for its six civic museums in 2026. Prices listed by the city's Casa della Musica, checked September 29, 2026:

Once the Camera reopens, the pass pays for itself with the Camera plus two other civic museums (€8 plus €4 plus €4 is €16). Until then, with the Camera closed, the pass only makes sense if you will visit at least four of the other five: the Pinacoteca Stuard, the Casa del Suono, the Museo dell'Opera, the Castello dei Burattini and Toscanini's birthplace. Entry is free for under-18s, for residents of Parma and on the first Sunday of the month.