Zurers in Italy 2025: Sunday, April 27: Day 4: Parma
Another beautiful morning, warm enough to eat breakfast outside at our bar up the street. Lots of tourists on this pleasant Sunday, streaming down the street to visit the Duomo and the Baptistery.
We are heading out of town today...first to Soragna, a small town about 20 miles northwest of Parma, where we are going to visit the Fausto Levi Jewish Museum, then to Zibello for lunch. The trip out of town doesn't start smoothly...when I get to the garage, the outside wooden door--which had always been open--is closed and I don't know how to open it. I walk back to the hotel and the desk clerk tells me that I have to use the remote control connected to the garage pass. No one told me that when I checked in.
As we try to leave the street where the hotel is located, we meet a metal barrier blocking most of the road. It turns out, unbeknownst to us, that the street is completely pedestrian on this Sunday, with food trucks and stalls lining the road for blocks. We have no choice but to inch our way through the crowds of pedestrians for a number of blocks. (Another car, driven by other hotel guests who have checked out, is following us.) Then we see that the end of the street is completely blocked with no exit possible. Luckily, one of the local police auxiliary notices our plight, moves a barricade to a side street, and waves us through to freedom.
The drive to Soragna takes about 45 minutes. When we get there, we see that there is a parmigiano-reggiano cheese festival taking over the streets.
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I drop Diana off so she can go to the museum and I park in a lot outside the town.
The Fausto Levi Jewish Museum was created by a local Soragna Jewish man named Fausto Levi who wanted to preserve the unique Jewish heritage of the Parma region. We are met by the guide, Alice Avanzi, who lives in Parma.
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She explains that under the Duchy of Parma, Jews weren't required to live in locked ghettos and were encouraged to stay in the small towns of the area. There were nominal restrictions against mixing with the "gentile" population but, in fact, there was a lot of interaction. There were seven Jewish communities in Parma province before the racial laws of the 1930s and the Nazi occupation of Italy. After the war, many left the countryside for the cities or emigrated to Israel or other countries.
Mr. Levi was able to collect the religious objects, the furnishings, etc. from the various local synagogues and arrange to house them in the museum.
The synagogue, which dates back to the 1850s, is no longer used for regular religious services but can be rented for weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc.
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We have a very interesting time with Alice...she is able to skip over most of her basic lectures on Judaism and we are able to share experiences and memories of the various Jewish communities in Italy. She shows us some of the ketubahs (wedding contracts) on display in the women's gallery. One is notable because the bride and groom were very political and it includes pictures of the leading Italian figures - King Vittorio Emanuele II, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Count Cavour - in the unification of the country (1861), right on the ketubah.
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A few of the other displays in the museum...
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There are a couple of rooms devoted to local residents who were deported and murdered as well displays of local area partisan activities.
We had actually visited the museum on our previous stay in Parma in 2007, but it has expanded quite a bit since then. We were very glad to return.
On the way out of town, we stop to sample some parmigiano-reggiano....the 60 month old cheese is amazing.
We have been returning to La Buca in Zibello for many years.
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The place was written up enthusiastically in the New Yorker by Bill Buford in 2004 and anytime we are within an hour of the restaurant, we try to have lunch there.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-pasta-station
We almost always have the same thing...a plate of culatello (the local cured meat speciality) served with butter and giardiniera, followed by delicate tagliatelle in a culatello and cheese sauce. Today we also had a plate of local asparagus--tasty but overcooked according to our taste. We drink a half-bottle of slightly sparkling local red wine--Gutturnio--which was a good match for our food. Diana was very enthusiastic about her plum crostata. It is great to be able to continue our tradition.
We have another challenge when we return to Parma...the roads in the center are still closed to traffic and both the main route and the alternate route to the hotel are inaccessible. However, I am confident that I can navigate there by a roundabout route and, with a few hiccups and a drive the wrong way on a one way street, we do make it back without a mishap.
I take another exploratory walk to a new section of town and then watch the Nationals play the Mets on the computer and enjoy seeing their come-from-behind victory.
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No dinner tonight but we do go out for a gelato in the finally quiet town.
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Tomorrow we finish up our sightseeing in Parma and perhaps do a laundry.
Jim and Diana
