Pieve di Colorno

The Cathedral of Colorno, dedicated to Santa Margherita Vergine and Martire, is located in the homonymous town in the province of Parma and was completed between the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century at the edge of the village, considered the oldest core of the country. It is thought that the original parish church was built in the area of the Ducal Garden enclosed within the Royal Palace, as is credited in a document of the sixteenth century showing the name “Pieve di Colorno” in reference to that particular area.

Originally designed with a rectangular plan with three naves divided by Corinthian columns, it had no side chapels but only some altars against the walls; the ceiling was in wood and the floor in terracotta.

The facade, in late Gothic style, is composed of brick and has a main facade with a gabled, with four buttresses crowned by four pinnacles that reveal the score of the three naves inside. Inside, the church has a planimetric composition with a Latin cross; the central nave, surmounted by a series of cross vaults with ribs and a series of round arches, extends into the presbytery and ends in the late Gothic apse.

To the right of the presbytery stands the late medieval bell tower. Of particular beauty is the wooden pulpit built in the eighteenth century which depicts the coat of arms of the Dominicans, from the Church of St. Peter the Martyr of Parma destroyed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1813.

The lines of the church recall in proportion, the Church of San Francesco del Prato in Parma. The last works carried out date back to 1834-1844, when the building took on its present neoclassical appearance.