The Duchies of Parma and Modena counted little in the political balance in their day, but the fêtes and spectacles of their courts were frequently brilliant.
The Duchy of Parma and of Piacenza was created in 1545 by the Pope Paul III for his son Pietro Farnese. Little of Parma’s mediæval character remains to-day. The town is said to have been called Parma from its similarity to the form of a shield. But the torrent Parma, which runs through the city, crossed by three bridges, besides the railway bridge, most probably gave its name to the city which arose upon the banks. When the city was under the authority of the Popes it was represented by a female figure sitting on a pile of shields, and holding a figure of Victory, with the inscription of Parma aurea. Let the heraldic students figure out any solution of the incident that they please, or are able.
The Via Æmilia divides the city, by means of the Strada Mæstra, into two very nearly equal parts. Parma, like Modena and Lucca, has changed its fortification walls into boulevards, called “Stradone,” which are the favourite rendezvous for Parmesan high society when it goes out for a stroll.
Near Parma is Canossa, the site of an old fortified town, one day of considerable importance, but now decayed beyond hope. Here the Emperor Henry IV, bareheaded and barefooted, supplicated Pope Gregory V in 1077, an incident of history not yet forgotten by the annalists of church and state.
Soon after leaving Parma the Roman road crosses the river Taro, the boundary frontier which shut off the Gaulish from the Ligurian tribes. The Brothers of the Bridge here built a great work of masonry in 1170, obtaining money for the expense of the work by begging from the travellers passing to and fro on the Æmilian Way. In time this old bridge was carried away, and for centuries a ferry boat served the purpose, until, in fact, the present structure came into being.
Borgo San Donino, some twenty kilometres beyond the Taro, marks the shrine of San Donino, a soldier in the army of Maximilian who became a Christian and refused to worship as commanded by his Emperor. For this he was put to death on this spot, and for ever after Borgo San Donino has been one of the most frequented places of pilgrimage in Italy.
Fiorenzuola, still on the Via Æmilia, a dozen kilometres farther on, has still an old tower to which hang fragments of an enormous chain by which criminals once were bound and swung aloft.
All through this fertile, abundant region through which runs the famous Roman Road are numerous little borgos, or villages, bearing names famous in the history of Italy and its contemporary minor states.