Parma Color Viola is an event that spirits the springs of our town since several years.
In these days in Parma the activities tied to violets are many. For example you can browse around in our Botanical Garden, founded by Philip of Bourbon, where you will also be able to see some interesting herbaria of the eighteenth century, as well as the one by Albertina Sanvitale.
Albertina was Maria Luigia’s daughter, and she liked to collect flowers and small crops. Her herbarium is very interesting also because she liked to compose her flowers with a lot of care, and to write down where she had found the little crops.
The violet is one 
of the symbols of Parma because this flower was well-loved by Marie Louise of Austria, Napoleon’s second wife, who became Duchess of Parma in 1816. Beyond loving the scent of this small flower, she also adored its color, so much so that the uniforms of her valets were violet, as well as the dresses of her courtiers.
Maria Luigia also liked to desiccate these little flowers, to paint them and to embroider them. Sometimes she also added a small violet to her signature.
It might seem strange, but the Duchess had learned to use the violets’ fragrance against bad odors from Josefine Behaurnais, Napoleon’s first wife. Josefine had a bundle of these flowers pinned on her chest the first time she met Napoleon. Violets became a symbol of their love, and when they married these were the only flowers admitted. Napoleon adopted violets also as a symbol of his party, so much that after the exile he also was apostrophized with the epithet of Caporal Violette.
Besides Josefine and our Duchess, violets in history have bewitched, tank to their fragrance and to their color, several other great women, from Queen Victoria, who had thousands planted, to Eleonora Duse, who used to pin a bundle on her breast. Several men too, artists, nobles and literates have been fascinated by violets, that have truly ancient origins.
Violets would in fact have been created by Zeus, to feed his beloved I. He had transformed the beautiful nymph into a heifer, to hide her from his wife Era’s anger. From the nymph’s name comes the word Ion, which means purple. According to Ovid, moreover, shortly before being kidnapped by Pluto, also Proserpina was picking up violets and lilies.
However, these delicate seedlings would have reached Europe from temperate zones, maybe from the East or from Africa. The Greeks used them to decorate the altars in their homes, and at the streets corners in Athens small bundles of violets were sold, because they were also used for medical purposes. According to the Romans a wreath of violets was an effective antidote against headaches caused by heavy drinking. The Arabs instead used violets’ essential oils as tonics for the heart.
The cultivation of violets on an industrial scale dates back to the 16th Century, when they started to be used in abundance at the court of Luis XIV against bad smells due to poor hygiene.
In Italy however they were already grown by botanists in the 16th Century in Napoli thanks to their fragrance. And in Napoli, probably, was also cultivated for the first time the Viola odorata pallida plena, better known as Parma Violet.
Its origins are, in fact, unknown. It is a double flowered violet, it has an intense fragrance and a blue-violet color, with small red dots in the centre. According to some botanists it comes from Asia Minor, and would have arrived in Italy tank to the Venetians. For others, instead, it would be original of Catalonia. However it appeared in Napoli in the 16th Century, that’s why it is also called Neapolitan Violet. It was probably sent to Parma by the Bourbons.
In the 19th Century, Count Filippo Brazzà obtained some varieties that were much better than the previous ones, they had extra-double flowers and purple-blue color, and were used for the decoration of gardens as the ones of the Pincio, of the Campidoglio and of Piazza San Marco.
The perfume of violets was obtained by the Franciscans of the Annunziata Church in Parma. In primis it was produced for the Duchess only, but in 1870 approximately it was patented by Ludovico Borsari, who created the first Italian perfume industry.
In Parma, however, violets are still today used also in cookery: in our pastries you can find small boxes filled in with sugared violets. They can be served with coffee, or they can be used to decorate cakes as the cottage cheese cake, the lemon cake or the chocolate one.
Now almost nobody makes sugared violets at home any more, even if the recipe is quite simple. The ingredients are just violets, sugar and water. The weight of the sugar must be equal to that of the flowers. Violets should preferably be just beginning Wash them gently with the whole stem. Slightly grease with oil a sheet of wax paper. The difficulty is to dissolve the sugar, that must be put in a pan with a few tablespoons of water, but must remain clear. As the sugar becomes golden remove the pan from the heat, and soak the violets holding them by the stem. Then lay them on the wax paper and allow to cool. You can store them in a tin box.