Casa della Musica

Parma gathered its musical administration under one roof and chose a Renaissance palace with a turbulent past. At Palazzo Cusani, the Casa della Musica brings together a concert hall, auditorium, music library and the Teatro Regio's historical archive.

Why it matters

The Casa della Musica manages a civic system including the Biblioteca-Mediateca, the Archivio Storico del Teatro Regio, Sala dei Concerti and Auditorium. It supports music-related research, teaching and performance in a restored noble residence that has served as a university, mint, courthouse, school and air-raid shelter.

What to notice

Palazzo Cusani, rich in painted and sculpted decoration, was built in the second half of the fifteenth century by the Parma branch of the noble Cusani family and ceded to the community of Parma early in the seventeenth century. It housed the University until 1768, became the state mint in 1778 by order of Don Ferdinando di Borbone, and turned into a courthouse in 1820 under the Duchy of Marie Luigia, completing the prison quarter of the nearby San Francesco convent complex. After the court moved out in 1924 it served as a secondary school, its great halls partitioned; a wartime air-raid shelter altered it further, and the 1983 earthquake left it disused until a careful restoration reopened it to the public in 2002. Surviving painted ceilings and the square-plan courtyard reveal the Renaissance structure beneath later adaptations.

Context and history

The institution's founding idea belongs to Parma's recent cultural policy: gather music, documentation and performance so the Conservatorio's students, opera scholars and audiences share one address. The city's tourism portal presents the Casa della Musica as an important centre for musical research and documentation, with a multimedia museum and events space in the heart of the historic centre. Its Sala dei Concerti and Auditorium complement the Teatro Regio and Auditorium Paganini, while the Biblioteca-Mediateca and Teatro Regio archive preserve documentation of two centuries of opera. The 2002 restoration included accessibility improvements.