Public Gardens - Parco del Popolo

Address and contacts

Viale Allegri - 42121 Reggio nell'Emilia
GiraReggio

How to get there

Reggio nell'Emilia - Town centre

Historical notes

Development of the gardens began in 1850 with the destruction of the Citadel, a defensive fortress built in 1339 by the Gonzagas.
Initially used as a track for horse racing (until the early 1900s), the area was later converted into a public park. The construction of the Municipal Theatre was decisive, with the necessity of beautifying the space behind it: an Italian style was chosen for the gardens, with regular spacing of the avenues and areas of greenery according to a design by Giuseppe Balzaretto. Various monuments, statues and busts have been placed among the precious trees, rare plants and large green spaces throughout the years, including the fountain dedicated to the abbot Ferrari Bonini in 1885, the statues of the “four seasons” moved from the ducal palace in Rivalta in the 1920s, and the busts of several notable figures from Reggio’s history including Maria Melato, Gaetano Chierici and Leopoldo Nobili, the statues of Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto, originally displayed in the interior of the Pratonieri Palace on Via Toschi, and several sculptures donated by the Parmeggiani family including the fountain with the elephant.
In 1930, a relic of Roman times was placed in the park: the Monument of the Concordi, part of a funeral enclosure discovered the previous year in Boretto and brought to Reggio on the orders of the fascist authorities, who placed a reproduction of the “Capitoline she-wolf” nearby in 1935.