Italy: Parmesan Cheese and the Prettiest Post Office in the World

Parma is Italy in a microcosm: Modern Ducatis weaving on cobblestone streets between ancient buildings. Stylish young girls zipping around on vespas. Stylish old men sipping espressos. And above all else, the food. Glorious, glorious Italian food. And so it was with no small anticipation that we rode our train across the alps and excitedly noticed signs changing from German to Italian. Somehow everything seemed a bit more....stylish.

I am not sure how the Italians do it...everyone is relaxed, no one is super efficient or worried about anything. Maybe it comes from having been established for so long. Parma, for example, has been settled by a people called the Etruscans since sometime between 1500BCE and 800BCE. For the sake of comparison, that is somewhere between when the Isrealites left Egypt and when King Uzziah was praying for an extra 15 years of life.

 

The Etruscans were a people who were wealthy and powerful. They were heavily influenced by the Greeks, but ultimately they were assimilated by the Romans from around 100BCE. In 183BCE, the Roman colony of Parma was officially founded. In the grip of this thrilling history, I almost forgot to mention the post office!

This little post office was clearly old, beautiful, and very much a post office. Apart from us, everyone else was doing their regular day to day posting business. Also, I was unable to find any information on when it was built, or why it was so pretty. Which tells you a lot about Italy - there is such an embarrassment of old and beautiful stuff that it just kind of blends into the background.

Right in the middle of Parma stands this church, the 'Triadi Augusti Sacrum' about which I can find absolutely zero information, but on the plus side has the Tetragrammatron front and center!

A much more famous church is the Parma cathedral which stands next to a baptistry. The baptistry is resplendent in pink marble. Its unique for being octahedral in shape, and started its construction in 1196.

The cathedral standing next to it is more famous for its interior. The building was started in 1056. 500 years later, a chap called Corregio showed up and painted the interior rather spectacularly. Its difficult to see in this picture, but the dome uses startling perspective, which was his trademark.

It should be noted that just because he painted a church, did not prevent him from painting some pretty racy paintings of Greek and Roman gods. The main part of the church was painted mainly by Benedetti Antelami, who in his off time apparently was an architect who designed the baptistry.

But the main reason I love Parma is not the grand historical buildings. Its that when you walk around the city center, you come across scenes like this:

Laid back, ancient mixed in with modern. Daily life just continues without worrying excessively about the great weight of history that exists.

Parma is surrounded by verdant hills - it is really a strong agricultural area, and a brief drive out of town shows this well.

Our intrepid and knowledgeable guide, Dorothy took us up to a medieval castle to have a bit of a peek around.

The Castello del Torrechiara, the grand name of this castle, is a really fine old building. It was built between 1448 and 1460 by another chap named Pier Maria de Rossi. For good measure he put not one, not two, but triple walls round the outside, and a tower on each corner.

The tower corners offer a fabulous view on the surrounding countryside.

Pier was a military leader, great intellectual, and apparently also a sentimental sort of guy. The story is that Pier built the castle not just for military strength, but also as a mansion for his lover, Bianca Pellegrini. One of the rooms was decorated in pure gold and had frescos of intertwined hearts and Pier and Bianca's initials. It's not just love sick teenagers who do stuff like that.

The castle has tons of picturesque door frames, and was practically empty. We only saw one other group coming in as we left. So there were endless opportunities for photo ops.

Yes, we did get a bit carried away. I had to delete lots of them, and I still ended up with all these door ways pics. At least I know Kim will appreciate them.

To distract you from the monotony of all these doorway pictures, a word on 'frescos'. The castle is loaded with well preserved frescos. It was also the same technique that Corregio used on the Catheral of Parma, and that was much used by Italian renaissance artists like Michelangelo (more on him later!) Basically, they would paint on wet plaster, so that when the plaster set, the picture would become part of the wall. It sounds incredibly difficult though.

We cannot leave Parma without mentioning its gastronomic delights: Parmesan cheese, Parma Ham and something I had never thought of before: aged balsamic vinegar (it has nothing to do with balsam - it just means it's thought to be curative like balsam.) Little shops like this abound in Parma, that you walk around in for a few minutes before you realize your mouth is hanging open and drool is spilling out. And the taste of these regional specialties is to die for.

The balsamic vinegar is not the regular stuff you may have seen in shop. This stuff is aged for a minimum of 12 years (!) and is often served in a drop on a piece of Parmesan cheese. Oh, and the cheese is not the regular stuff either. This is so good that in Italy, the mafia don't attack armored vehicles carrying cash: they target lorries carrying Parmesan cheese.

Quite frankly, it's a bit surprising that the Italians had time for romance, building castles and forging a world empire. I personally would have just sat around feasting on ham and cheese with a wee drop of heavenly balsamic vinegar.

A final addiction: gelato. Italian ice cream can bring a grown man to tears. We found a shop where it was hand made by a man from Tanzania, of all places. He was so excited to talk some Swahili that we all had free gelatos. Make no mistake, we would have paid our last euro for this stuff.

I may have mentioned in passing the little detail about this being a world empire? Onward now to the great capital of that vast empire: Rome.