Palazzo della Pilotta

Start with the brick. Run your eyes along these long, rough walls and notice how raw they look, as if the builders went home for lunch and never came back. Small square holes run across the surface. Some arches are filled in, others stay open to the air. Pigeons settle in the gaps. On a grey Parma morning the whole mass looks the colour of dried earth. On a sunny afternoon it turns warm and almost orange.

This is the Palazzo della Pilotta. It is one of the largest building complexes in Parma, and it was never finished. That unfinished face is not decay. It is the original state of the building. The marble or plaster facing that a ducal palace would normally carry was simply never added. So what you see is the skeleton of an ambition. It is a court that grew faster than its budget.

The ambition belonged to the Farnese family. They ruled the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza from the sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century. Work on this complex began in the late sixteenth century. It was not a grand residence. It was a service building for the ducal court. It held stables, storerooms, quarters for staff and soldiers, and large halls for ceremonies. Covered passages once linked it to the ducal residence nearby.

Now for the name, which surprises many visitors. Pilotta comes from pelota, the Basque ball game. Spanish soldiers stationed in Parma are said to have played it in one of the courtyards here. The Farnese had close ties to the Spanish crown, so Spanish troops were a familiar sight in the city. The story is widely repeated. It explains why one of the most serious cultural buildings in Italy carries the name of a ball game.

The Farnese dynasty ended in the eighteenth century. The duchy passed to the Bourbons, and later to Marie Louise of Austria, the second wife of Napoleon. Each ruler used the building in a different way. Over time the stables and storerooms became academies, a library, galleries and museums. The working court building slowly turned into a house of learning and art.

Then came the Second World War. In 1944, Allied bombing raids struck Parma, and the Pilotta was badly hit. Large sections collapsed. Some parts were never rebuilt, which is why the complex has open spaces and broken edges today. As you walk around the outside, look for places where the brick changes tone. Newer brick often sits next to the old, darker brick. Those seams show the post-war repairs.

Today the complex holds several institutions under one roof. There is the National Gallery, the Palatine Library, the National Archaeological Museum, and a museum for the printer Giambattista Bodoni. And there is the room that most people come for — the Teatro Farnese. You usually reach these spaces through a single route, so plan to give yourself time. This is not a place to rush.

The Teatro Farnese is a vast wooden theatre built inside a former armoury hall on the upper floor. It was designed by the architect Giovan Battista Aleotti in the early seventeenth century. It was made for one great occasion, a ducal wedding between the Farnese and the Medici families. Here is the second surprise. The central floor could be flooded with water. That allowed the court to stage mock sea battles in front of the guests.

The theatre was rarely used after that, because each performance was hugely expensive. The bombs of 1944 damaged it badly, and it was rebuilt in the decades after the war. Much of what you see today is bare, honey-coloured wood. The original painted decoration survives only in fragments. Stand at the back of the curved seating and look toward the deep stage. It is a key early example of the stage framed by an arch, the layout that later theatres across Europe followed.

Beyond the theatre, the National Gallery holds paintings from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Parma is closely linked to two painters of the Renaissance, Correggio and Parmigianino, and their work is well represented here. One small picture draws special attention — a head of a young woman known as La Scapigliata, which means the woman with loose hair. It is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. It is unfinished, like the building around it, and that quality suits this place.

The Palatine Library carries a quieter kind of fame. Its reading rooms have tall wooden shelves and long tables, and the light falls softly through high windows. Inside the library is the Bodoni Museum. Bodoni was a printer who worked in Parma in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His typefaces were so clear and elegant that his name is still used for fonts today. You may have read a magazine title set in Bodoni without knowing it was born in this city.

The archaeological museum is easy to overlook, but it rewards a slow visit. It holds finds from Parma and the surrounding region, from prehistory through the Roman period. The Roman town of Veleia, in the hills south of Parma, supplied many objects. Among them is a large bronze tablet covered in fine Latin text. It records a Roman scheme to support children with public funds. It is a document of welfare, written in metal nearly two thousand years ago.

When you step outside again, notice the open square in front of the building. This is Piazza della Pace, a wide green space created after the war on ground cleared by the bombing. Beyond it, the Parma river runs past the western side of the complex. Cyclists cross the square, students sit on the grass, and church bells sound across the rooftops. The Pilotta does not dominate the city like a castle. It sits low and long beside daily life.

Before you move on, look once more at those empty holes in the brick. They once held the scaffolding of builders who expected to return. They never did — and four centuries later, the building still waits. Inside that plain shell sit a flooded-stage theatre, a Leonardo, and the letters of a master printer. Carry that contrast with you as you walk away, toward the river or back into the old town.