PIAZZA VERDI

The main square in Busseto is named after the Maestro. Facing on it are the citadel, the Collegiate Church and colonnaded buildings, and at the centre is the bronze monument to Verdi by the sculptor Luigi Secchi, inaugurated in 1913, the centenary of Verdi's birth.

BAREZZI HOUSE AND HALL

In front of the Citadel on the opposite side of the square is Antonio Barezzi's house. The first floor hall may be visited; it was the seat of the Busseto Filarmonica founded in 1816 by Barezzi and Provesi, the place where Verdi studied and first emerged as a young composer.
The hall now appears in its late-1800s aspect after restoration work done in 1979 and 1998 by the Friends of Verdi association which uses it as its seat.
The furnishings are all original: the Viennese Tomaschek pianoforte, the oil portrait of Barezzi over the great 17th century fireplace as well as that in charcoal of Verdi, the first image of the Maestro that has come down to us. At present the hall is used for concerts and conferences and houses the Antony Rocco Schipper-Suppa recording library, with over 500 complete operas.

VERDI THEATRE

Planned by the architect Montecchini, built between 1859 and 1864 by Giovanni Sivelli, decorated by Parma artists Biasi and Malpeli, with the beautiful allegorical ceiling completed by the Busseto artist Gioacchino Levi in 1868, it was solemnly inaugurated on August 15th, 1868 with two Verdi operas: Un ballo in maschera and Rigoletto.
Previously another theatre had occupied the site, where Verdi had performed in his youth, directing a symphony for Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Rossini.
The new theatre was provided with efficient functional structures: a deep stage equipped with scenery, machinery and many dressing rooms, and in the hall two orders of sixteen boxes each and a balcony, foyer and smoking room, "trattoria", rehearsal rooms, scenery salon and bronze chandeliers. During its 120 years of existence almost all of Verdi's operas have been performed.
Recently restored, adapted for safety regulations and reopened to the public, it can seat 300 spectators.

ORLANDI PALACE

Built in neo-classical style by Giuseppe Cavalli, a Busseto painter and architect living between the 17 and 1800s.
Giuseppe Verdi bought it in 1845 and went to live there in August 1849, when it was the most elegant and modern building in the small town.
It was here that the Maestro composed Luisa Miller, Stiffelio, Rigoletto and Il Trovatore. Verdi sold it to Giuseppina Strepponi who soon unburdened herself of it, designating the proceeds for a perpetual pension for the poor of Busseto.
Nowadays an exposition of epoque furniture has been set up in Verdi's apartment, with various autograph copies and many objects of Arturo Toscanini, who was a guest of the Orlandi family in 1913 and 1926.

MONTE DI PIETÁ

The Monte was an institution that united its pawn loans and charity with cultural promotion: it financed the Busseto music school and the chapel music of the San Bartolomeo Collegiate, besides contributing to the support of the grammar school teachers and distributing bursaries to poor, worthy students.
Young Giuseppe Verdi received its support for three years, thereby completing his studies in Milan as a composer, and once he became famous he showed his gratitude with the legacy to the institution of several farms.
Since 1768 the Monte di Pietà has run a public library and undertaken the construction of elegant and spacious rooms in the new wing of its 17th century building, that today houses, besides the Library, the historic rooms of the Monte with antique furniture (exceptional the monumental piece from the Archives) and the precious furnishings and exhibition rooms on the ground floor.
In 1960 the Monte di Pietà merged with the Cassa di Risparmio of Parma and the new business in the past forty years has been very attentive to the conservation of the palace, the art collection preserved there and to the management of the historic Archive and the Library, which houses, besides its 35,000 ancient and modern volumes, the manuscript collection of the Busseto Filarmonica, the amateur society Verdi belonged to as a youth and which he directed on his return from Milan: it consists of 657 unpublished pieces, about half by Ferdinando Provesi, Verdi's first music teacher.

CIVIC MUSEUM (Villa Pallavicino)

Located south-west of the town, Villa Pallavicino stands out in isolation at the end of a poplar-lined lane. Already in construction in 1518, the date the land was acquired by Matteo Marri of Busseto, soon after it became property of the Pallavicino family. Carlo V visited there in 1533.
It remained unfinished until the late 1600s, when it was completed with two back sections, the addition of a floor and the renovation of almost the entire interior decoration in baroque style, as it appears today despite the wear of time. It was acquired during the 20^th century by the town of Busseto, which has undertaken a demanding and progressive restoration project to bring the palace back to its antique splendour. Surrounded by a square moat, the villa is entered by a bridge over the porter's pavilion, almost an arch of triumph cadenced by pilaster strips festooned with garlands and surmounted by a Bibiena-style deception of a theatre stage with false plaster curtains and vases at the fastigium with lateral scrolls: it was planned by the Duke's architect Domenico Valmagini who was working in Busseto at the Monte di Pietà at the time. The two niches are occupied by statues of Istrian stone of Flora and Bacchus by the Venetian Giuseppe Torretti who also did the other garden sculptures, now dispersed between Villa Verdi in Sant'Agata and Rocca Meli Lupi in Soragna.
The central section, which may be entered from the rear or from the sides up three ramps of granite stairs and through the arches of the portico, shows the most obvious signs of the Renaissance origin of the villa: the cornices of the rusticated ashlar and the "buffalora" opened to the four winds, with its umbrella dome frescoed with mythological and grotesque figures à la Baglioni and other Emilian decorators of the second half of the 16th century.
The interior, home of the Civic Museum, has its ceilings decorated by a vast cycle of allegorical frescoes, framed by stuccoes, some of which are late Baroque, others already rococo.
The wall paintings of the ground floor were done by Evangelista Draghi (south-west section), Ilario Spolverini (north-east section) and Pietro Rubini, who also painted most of the upper floor: typical examples of extreme-époque Farnese decoration.
The Civic Museum, present here since 1959, gathers together the souvenirs of local history with furnishings of different eras bequeathed to the town by the Seletti family as well as several pieces belonging to Verdi, among which the spinet Verdi used for his first music lessons at Santa Maria degli Angeli. Several Verdi autographs and notable 17th and 18th century ceramics are also interesting. And finally to be noted are several works by the Busseto painter Alberto Pasini, the most famous orientalist of the 19^th century.

SAN BARTOLOMEO COLLEGIATE CHURCH

The church, rebuilt starting from 1473 on orders of Orlando Pallavicino il Magnifico, is decorated on its façade with precious terracotta of Lombard style.
Inside, there are important paintings from the 16^th and 17^th centuries among which are fifteen tondos of The Mysteries of the Rosary by Vincenzo Campi and impressive frescoes by Michelangelo Anselmi. Ferdinando Provesi was organist and choir master there from 1820 to 1833 and when he died, Verdi cut short his studies in Milan hoping to succeed him, but, without a regular competition, Giovanni Ferrari from Guastalla was chosen instead. Incensed by this, the members of the Busseto Filarmonica, headed by Antonio Barezzi, refused to participate in any more sacred functions, and the town was divided into factions for and against Verdi.

ORATORY OF THE HOLY TRINITY

Adjacent to the Collegiate Church.
Here, on May 4^th, 1836 the marriage of Giuseppe Verdi and Margherita Barezzi was celebrated. Inside, there are beautiful 18th century stuccoes and the main altar from the same period of polychromatic marble. In the apse is the masterpiece of Vincenzo Campi: the Holy Trinity with Saints Apollonia and Lucia, painted in 1579.

CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGELI

The church and convent were built at the edge of the town between 1470 and 1474 even though they show signs of Gothic style. The rather bare though luminous interior preserves a masterpiece of Emilian sculpture of the 1400s, recently restored: The mourning of the dead Christ by Guido Mazzoni. Composed of eight full-sized figures in coloured terracotta placed in a grotto ornate with rock concretions, it was done by the famous Modena sculptor in 1476-77.
Worthy of mention are also the fresco of Nicolò dell'Abate, Christ fallen under the cross, dateable about 1543-44, and the painting of Antonio Campi of The Virgin with Franciscan Saints. Giuseppe Verdi frequented this church from the time of his youth to his adult years, and the day of the Epiphany, 1836, while the controversy raged over the post of choir master at the Collegiate Church, he held an organ concert there. The organ in question was given to the church of Trevozzo Valtidone in 1908 where it still resides.