Parma, after years finally unlocks something about the Correggio Chamber!

Could this finally be the good time for the Camera di San Paolo, Correggio’s masterpiece, to be opened to the public without a hitch? The Ministry of Culture, with the Emilia-Romagna Regional Directorate of Museums and the City of Parma are in fact close to reaching an agreement to hand over the management of the Camera di San Paolo and the Cella di Santa Caterina to the City Council. Approval by the City Council is expected this week.

In recent times, the opening hours of St. Paul’s Chamber had found some regularity, although such an important site was only open five hours a day (1:10 to 6:20 p.m.), and especially closed on Sundays. And in the past there had also been more or less long and extended periods of total closure: the hiccup openings in the summer of 2017, for example, had caused much media discussion. And that it is a site that people would like to visit is evidenced by the results: 25,000 visitors in 2019 (in the year of the pandemic, on the other hand, the São Paulo Chamber, between the difficulties due to Covid and the usual ones, recorded just 4,000 visitors). The problem has always been the age-old one that the Chamber shares with so many other museums throughout Italy: the lack of staff to keep it open regularly. So much so that last summer the City Council had asked MiC to manage it on its behalf. And now the situation has finally been unblocked.

The agreement between MiC and the City of Parma provides for the ’entrustment of the St. Paul’s Chamber to the City also with a view to reuniting the rooms with the St. Paul’s complex, which has undergone extensive restoration work. Between 2017 and 2018, a new lighting system was installed, aimed at enhancing the two rooms known as the Araldi (named after the Renaissance artist who decorated it, Alessandro Araldi) and the Correggio, and new studies and investigations were conducted on Correggio’s enigmatic frescoes, which led to the publication of two important volumes: Come in un rebus: Correggio and the Camera di San Paolo, written by Professor Elisabetta Fadda, and Correggio and the Camera di San Paolo. Unvelamenti inediti, written by Professor Renza Bolognesi.

Still, in 2019 emergency operations were carried out on the large canvas representing theLast Supper by Alessandro Araldi, while “between 2019 and 2020,” explains architect Giorgio Cozzolino, who has been head of the Regional Directorate for Museums for a few months, “restoration and safety work was carried out on the wall paintings present at the refectory, and the state of conservation of the wooden choir preserved in the same room was verified, preparing the conservative reconnaissance of the painted vaults. The microclimatic conditions of the halls were constantly monitored to promote their proper preservation, also proceeding to the replacement of the fixtures that were no longer functional with new fixtures made in the traditional manner to match perfectly in shape and color with the dictates of the period of the construction and decoration of the monastery. At the same time as these were replaced, the lintels and frescoes in the lunettes above the windows of the Araldi and Correggio rooms were secured.”

“The museum,” Cozzolino concludes, “has achieved high quality standards that the City of Parma, with the supervision of the Regional Museums Directorate of Emilia-Romagna, is committed to maintaining and increasing in the coming years. This is a fundamental step,” Director Cozzolino concludes, "to concretize an effective form of collaboration with the Administration in the common goal of an ever wider fruition and accessibility of the city’s exceptional cultural heritage.

Parma, after years finally unlocks something about the Correggio Chamber!

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