“It is rare for a city or an area to be identified with a colour, it is a typical Italian phenomenon: in addition to the Parma yellow there are only the Bologna red, the land of Siena, the Brentonic green, in the Brenta area and, nearby, the Istrian yellow. In the past it could happen that a prince visiting for some special event asked for the buildings on his path to be colored in a particular shade. But parma yellow was born spontaneously, not by edict. From the seventeenth century, with the baroque, began to reproduce the materials by painting them, so the bourgeoisie began to imitate the facades of the palaces of the lords aspiring to a rise in the social scale.
The yellow parma imitated a French stone that the nobles used to build their own buildings. It dates back to the eighteenth century and was originally called “chiaro d’ovo”: it was transparent, light and refined, elegant. Then, over the years, it has gradually become more and more obscure because over time the dark colours had become a symbol of authority. Today in the city there are at least 50 shades of yellow, from the lightest to the darkest. In general, they cover eighteenth-century architecture with overlapping plasterwork, one on top of the other”.
With these words the architect Massimo Casolari describes the origins of the colour symbol of Parma, which survives in two different variants: a lighter one dating back to the 18th century and a more intense one, dating back to the following century.
The palaces built during the Farnese already showed a wide use of ochre yellow and light red, but it was the French architect Petitot who began to paint them in a golden yellow during the restoration of the most important palaces of Piazza Grande, the current Piazza Garibaldi.
The legend tells of Petitot, inspired by the residents of Strada Sant’Anna and Strada San Michele, who painted their houses in a golden yellow inspired by the hair color of Isabella of Bourbon, passed in those streets during the procession for her wedding.
Later, with the arrival of Marie Louise in Parma, the original shade used to color villas and palaces has become darker and darker, like the one that can still be seen in the Teatro Regio, then intensified further until the end of the nineteenth century.
Now the original pastel colour can only be found by peeling the walls of the Casino dei Boschi di Carrega between Sala Baganza and Collecchio, where Archduchess Maria Luigia, restoring the villa in neoclassical style, intensified the shade of yellow.