Puppets castle – Giordano Ferrari museum

The Puppets castle – Giordano Ferrari museum is the most important collection in Italy dedicated to the animation theatre. About 2842 pieces, between puppets, marionettes, heads, 637 stage objects, scenery,  pictures and posters, 438 scripts (more of them manuscripts), a specific library about figurative theatre and paper archives.

The exhibition path inaugurated on December 27th 2018 starts with puppets that have been sculpted, or have worked, in Emilia: the famous dynasties of the Preti and Campogalliani are represented that have influenced the formation of many artists lived in the past two centuries, among which those of the province of Parma to which a shrine is dedicated. Continuing there are pieces from puppeteers of central – northern origin of the same period, followed by others who come to the present day, made of cloth or papier – mâché, like the puppets built and used by the Roman painter Carlo Ludovico Bompiani who were donated to the museum from his sons in October 2018.

In the last room there is a sort of monograph about Ferrari family of Parma which, puppeteers from four generations, have created a real stylistic figure in the sculpture of the pieces.

In the central cases are exhibited the puppets belonged to large Italian companies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; a space is reserved to the three main traditions (Palermo, Catania and Naples) of the Opera dei Pupi and another to the Group 80, which with its television puppets, as Uan, has passionate generations of children in the last two decades of 1900.

Free guided tours are available on request. Every weekend free guided tours and puppets shows. For details and hours, check with the museum.