The Classic Visit to Reggio Emilia

This itinerary is concentrated in the historical centre of the city, allowing you to experience thousands of years of history of this city on the Padana plain. It is located, as are the other principal Emilian centres, on the axis of the the “Via Emila” - The Aemilia Way. It was in 175 B.C. that the Romans founded a regional administrative centre named Regium Lepidi after the consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the architect of the Via Emilia.The visit winds through a series of piazzas: Piazza del Teatri (with the theatres); Piazza Grande now called Piazza Prampolini with the Cathedral, the Baptistery and the Palazzo del Comune (the original city hall); Piazza San Prospero, with its Basilica and ending up in Corso Garibaldi, where the Sanctuary of the Madonna of the Ghiara is found, with its splendid sequence of frescos by the 17th Century Emilian school of artists.

For further information please contact:
e.mail info@itineraemilia.it
Tel. + 39 327 74 69 902

Piazza dei Teatri Piazza dei Teatri

The theatrical vocation of the city is testified to by the presence of two beautiful theatres in close proximity. The Teatro Ariosto, dates from the eighteenth-century, and is dedicated to the great Reggio poet, Ariosto; and the Teatro Municipale “Valli”, which stages some of the greatest ballet performances in Italy.



Piazza Grande (Prampolini)

Lined on three sides by buildings dating from the middle ages, it is bounded on the East by the Cathedral with its unfinished facade, the Baptistery and the Bishop’s Palace.  To north the Palazzo del Monte, the original seat of the City Government, and on the South side, the City Hall with its “Sala del Tricolore”, here you can visit the actual place where the National Flag of Italy was “born” in 1797.



Piazza San Prospero

Walking through the “Broletto”, a medieval covered passage, we enter the Piazza of the Basilica constructed in the 10th  century and dedicated to the Patron Saint of the city, Saint Prospero, to its side is an uncompleted 16th Century octagonal tower. Inside the church you can see a beautiful series of frescos painted by Camillo Procaccini in the latter years of the century, and a wooden choir of two lines of stalls carved by the brothers Cristoforo and Lorenzo da Lendinara.



Santuario della Madonna della Ghiara

The sanctuary of “Our Lady of Ghiara” was begun in 1597 on the spot where a miracle took place near an ancient fresco of the Madonna, It houses the works of great “Emilian” artists of the 17th Century including Alessandro Tiarini, Orazio Talami, Luca Ferrari, Lionello Spada and Giovanni Francesco Barbieri “il Guercino”.

Other attractions

The Civic Museum

Collected together in the ex-convent of St. Francis are the town’s collections of natural history, archaeology and art dating from the earliest times up to the nineteenth-century. These are carefully displayed on the wooden shelves of the era. There are very interesting sections from the prehistoric period to the medieval era including mosaics from Roman times.

The Church of Saints Girolamo e Vitale

This church owes its construction to the local architect and stage set designer Gaspare Vigarani, it is made up of three connected oratories typical of the Baroque period. One of the three is a copy of the “Church of the Holy Sepulchre” in Jerusalem.



Museum of the “Tri-Colour”

This museum tells the story of the birth of the national flag of Italy  through documents and heirlooms of the period, from the origins of the Reggiana Republic in 1796 to the events of 1831.

Galleria Parmeggiani

An unusual museum located in a pseudo-medieval building, whose tower overlooks a corner of Piazza della Vittoria. The gallery houses a collection by the painter and Spanish collector Ignacio Leòn y Escosura brought to Italy by the anarchic Luigi Parmeggiani a native of Reggio. It demonstrates a rare example of the artistic tastes of nineteenth-century art collectors.

For further information please contact:
e.mail info@itineraemilia.it
Tel. + 39 327 74 69 902