Ticket for a visit to the Jesuit Quarter in Parma

The guided tour takes in the University Building, the seat of the Ursuline Congregation, the current Courthouse Building erected on the site of the ancient Collegium of the Nobles, and the most important historical palaces of Via Farini, discovering curiosities and anecdotes about the historical personalities and families who once inhabited them.

Diego Lainez and Pierre Favre, companions of Ignatius of Loyola, had been requested to the Pope by the Cardinal Legate Ennio Filonardi as 'cooperators, not so much to take over piety, as to vigorously oppose the propaganda of the Lutherans'. Through personal example and preaching, the two Jesuits proposed a new model of spiritual life, the reform of customs and exercised scrupulous doctrinal vigilance. To unite the efforts of men who were engaged in charitable activities at the time, Pierre Favre chose the Congregation of Charity, founded in the early 16th century by Francesco de Meda. The Congregation provided assistance to former prostitutes, orphans, prisoners, unmarried girls and lapsed noblemen, but the privileged recipients of its action were always the 'sick poor', i.e. the sick without means of their own, whom the Congregation cared for until the birth of the first National Health Service. Duke Ottavio Farnese's initial mistrust of the Jesuits was soon overcome, if already in 1564 the duke imposed on the community - still reluctant to host the followers of Ignatius of Loyola - to take on the indispensable financial burdens to allow them to settle in the city. Having founded the College of St. Roch, he granted his protection to the Community of the 'Daughters of Succour', later called 'Ursulines'. The reform of the school system desired by Ranuccio I Farnese would lead a few decades later to the foundation of the new Athenaeum and the creation of the Ducal College of St. Catherine, the Collegium of the Nobles known to contemporaries as 'the king of all colleges' for the socially exclusive nature of its users and for the breadth of its recruitment, having welcomed, until the expulsion of the Jesuits, around 5,000 boarders. At the beginning of the 17th century, thanks to the recruitment of famous professors, the University of Parma was reborn and, amidst building sites and the succession of ducal proclamations, the city of Parma slowly changed its face.