Museo Glauco Lombardi

The collection was built by Glauco Lombardi (1881 to 1970), a collector from Colorno who spent his life buying back what had been scattered from the ducal palaces. In 1934 he bought Marie Louise's personal belongings from Count Giovanni Sanvitale, her great-grandson through her daughter Albertina. The highlights, room by room:

• Salone delle Feste. The ballroom, with 18th-century stucco by the court decorator Benigno Bossi. Here hang Robert Lefevre's official portrait of Marie Louise as Empress (1812), a charcoal portrait of Napoleon by Francois Gerard, and Prud'hon's painting of their son, the King of Rome, as a sleeping Cupid. Also here: the corbeille de mariage, the cabinet that held Napoleon's wedding gifts, his autograph letters, her jewelry, and her fortepiano, restored in 2007 and played at the museum's concerts.
• Sala Maria Luigia. Prints and paintings of Napoleon's campaigns, from the Great Saint Bernard to Waterloo, beside the Duchess's sewing kits, embroidery, diaries and watercolors of her small dogs.
• Sala dei Francesi. The French-influenced court of Duke Philip of Bourbon and his minister Du Tillot: portraits of the ducal couple, works by Nattier and Boucher, and two Roman views by Hubert Robert.

Marie Louise left her sewing and embroidery tools in her will to the girls of the convent school of San Paolo; her daughter Albertina recovered them in 1860, when the convent was suppressed, and they passed down her family to the Sanvitale counts.

The rooms were remodeled in 1764 by the French architect Ennemond Alexandre Petitot as a Casino dei Nobili, a gaming house for the court, on the orders of Duke Philip and Du Tillot. In the mid-19th century Duke Charles III turned them into his private apartment, and they have kept that layout. The same building once held the old ducal theater of 1687, demolished after the Teatro Regio was built in 1821 to 1829.

During the museum's restoration of 1997 to 1999, workers found the remains of a Roman house and fragments of late Gothic frescoes under the rooms. The museum moved here in 1961 and added ground-floor rooms for temporary exhibitions in 2012; those thematic shows are free to enter.

The museum runs a music series on the ducal fortepiano and regular talks. Dates it had announced when we checked:

• Saturday, October 3, 2026, 11 a.m.: concert, in collaboration with Verdi Off, the fringe program around Festival Verdi.
• Saturday, October 10, 2026, 10:30 a.m.: talk by music historian Giuseppe Martini on Marie Louise's travels and theatergoing.

Each December the museum holds a Settimana di Maria Luigia, a week of events around the dates of her birth and death. The €50 annual card covers unlimited visits and paid events such as concerts and guided tours for the calendar year.

Go if you want to understand why Parma looks the way it does. Marie Louise gave the city the Teatro Regio, the sundials on Piazza Garibaldi and her crypt in the Steccata, and her violets became the city's scent (see Violetta di Parma). This museum is the key to all of it. Our article on Marie Louise tells her story.

Skip it if you have one day and no interest in the Napoleonic era: the Pilotta and the Duomo give more per hour. Because it closes at 4 p.m. on weekdays, do it in the morning, then walk 350 m to the Pilotta, which stays open until 7 p.m.