Petitot Room

This room is entirely devoted to Ennemond Alexandre Petitot (1727-1801), the great French architect who performed most of his work for the Bourbon court of Parma and who was one of the main influences in the passage of the artistic culture of the city from Rococo to Neoclassicism. He was a temperamental artist, eclectic and at the same time austere, who was able to give his work a profound poetic unity amid the variety of ideas from which he drew. He was born in Lyons in 1727 and attended the Academy of Architecture in Paris. In 1746 he began to attend the French Academy in Rome but was called back from Rome in 1753 by Minister Du Tillot to take over the prestigious position of Architect of the Duchy and instructor at the newly opened Academy of Fine Arts. His first works were for Palazzo Ducale di Colorno and the Giardino Ducale di Parma.