038 Parma

Strolling along Via al Duomo, you come, right in the middle of the street that becomes a square, upon the solid mass of the Baptistery, part of which lies outside the Roman city’s boundary.

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What may appear a random insertion, as when a dice rolls across a green cloth and stops at the edge, is actually the climax of an urban composition and a focal point between the Cathedral and the Vescovado. 

During my stroll, Aldo Rossi’s words when verifying The Architecture of the City in the field often spring to mind: “Density and independence are the features of Parma’s monuments which might, as in Pisa, sit on a lawn.” 1 Certainly, the occurrence is as remarkable as it is significant. In the mid-13 th century, Benedetto Antelami inserted the city’s famed presence between the insulae, a backdrop to the cathedral square and on the urban limit. The rarefied air of this space on the city’s edge can still be felt in the Longobard citadel become a cathedral city. 

Pilgrims flocked here from all over Europe and discovered the fantastic eye-level zoophorous narration to gaze at by night, lighting it with their torches as Nino Migliori did a few years ago to photograph it.  

The Baptistery, with its welcoming sculpted portals, distant open loggias and blind arches, is the first point of contact between the many interconnected cities that constructed Parma over time.