Wednesday, 13 March 2013

Daytrip to Parma

Parma - noted for Parma Ham, Parmesan Cheese, bloody horrible Parma Violet sweets ... and dildos, apparently.

This large billboard was outside the train station. No, I haven't a clue what it's about either. Who or what is the Dildo Society?

Also, it was snowing!

You can't see it, but I've got my feet wrapped in plastic bags to keep the wet out.
This is me standing in front of the Palazzo della Pilotta just before the blizzard hit. It's a VERY big building ... seriously, you can only see about half of the frontage in this pic. It also has very few exterior windows.

This is an interior doorway:


The Palazzo was a palace belonging to the Farnese family, who produced a bunch of dukes, cardinals and popes in the 15th thru 17th Century.

This is the private theatre in the palace - just gorgeous:

Built 1618, rebuilt 1962

The Palazzo now contains a rather awesome art gallery full of medieval paintings (no photos allowed, sadly) and an archaeological museum:

Neolithic Goddess


We went to another gallery, the Pinacoteca Stuard, where I found one of the most inappropriate and cringingly embarrassing paintings of biblical heroes ever wrought by the hand of man. How I laughed...

"Samuel educates the young boy David to the sound of the harp" (or "Get your hand off my ass, you pervert") by Giovanni Gaibazzi (1808-1888)

And the Cathedral baptisty:


which is rather lovely...

 

... to look for angels and demons. Here's some funky cherubim:

Can you imagine what they'd look like in real life?!

 And then we went to the Cathedral:


It was full of frescoes, including the usual cheerfully sadistic demon/hellfire stuff. No photography allowed again ... but the GIANT wall painting of Christ spurting his blood all over a grateful world was just so fab I had to sneak an illicit pic:

Catholicism: fifty shades of bugshit-crazy.

Mr Ashbless says he looks like SpiderJesus ("spins a web any size, catches sinners just like flies").

We didn't eat any parma ham. But we did buy some violet-flavoured jelly.

Parma ham
Parma ham
Goes nicely with
Some violet jam

Guess which earworm I've got right now?
*sigh*

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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous13 March 2013 at 14:56

    "Spider Jesus" - brilliant!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jo13 March 2013 at 21:36

    Oh my god, you've picked up a Spam Editor! The cheek of them.

    Great photos! I see the new pope looks like a Nerd Pope, but I'm not fooled.

    I know someone who just walked around Prague in plastic bags in the snow too :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Janine Ashbless13 March 2013 at 22:50

    Spam Editor???

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jo15 March 2013 at 14:34

    There was a spam comment evaluating your writing before - seems they've moved on from 'this is an interesting post, it's very interesting and enlightening, I would like to read more posts like this'.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Janine Ashbless17 March 2013 at 09:33

    Oh yeah - I go through every couple of days and delete all those. The spam filter isn't working the way it used to.

    ReplyDelete