Italian Eau de Cologne house founded in 1916, centered on Colonia’s signature bergamot-citrus profile and the brand’s distinctive Parma-yellow presentation.
Best for Colonia classics and leather-cased luxuries.
Some perfumes describe a place; one perfume is a color of light. Colonia, created in Parma in 1916, is Italian sunlight bottled — citrus opening like shutters thrown back on a bright morning, carried in the yellow hatbox that has become one of scent's most recognizable containers. The yellow is Parma's: the ochre of the city's walls, borrowed for a package that promises the contents before the cap comes off.
The house built itself on that single sustained note. Where French perfumery of the same era pursued complexity — the oriental, the chypre, the abstract — Acqua di Parma pursued clarity: the Mediterranean's citrus, Italian ingredients, a freshness that reads as civilization rather than sport. Colonia became the gentleman's scent of the Italian century, worn through the era when Italian style conquered the world's imagination, and it remains crafted in Parma from Italian citrus and Mediterranean materials — provenance you can smell.
The modern house extends the sunlight into leather-cased luxuries and the full grooming ritual, but everything radiates from the 1916 original: the conviction that a fragrance need not be a riddle. Colonia classics and their yellow boxes travel the world as portable Parma — the city's light, its walls' color, its name — a scent that has spent over a century proving that simplicity, done at this level, is the hardest trick in perfumery and the most durable one.
Parma delicatessen trading since 1952 on family recipes passed down through generations. The counter stocks regional cured meats, cheeses and wines representing the city's food traditions.
Best for Family-recipe Parma cured meats and cheese since 1952.
Parma perfume house founded by Lodovico Borsari, known for Violetta di Parma, the violet scent it created at the end of the nineteenth century.
Best for Italian eau de cologne and violet-led heritage fragrances associated with parma
Lodovico Borsari created Violetta di Parma at the end of the nineteenth century, drawing on Parma's glassmakers, packaging workshops and printers. The house's bottles and presentation evolved from Liberty to Art Déco, with cut glass, satin-finished bands and engraved glass stoppers. Borsari worked with illustrators and graphic artists on posters, scented calendars and shop displays, and participated in the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs Modernes in Paris. Its Parma shop opened in 1930; the historic shop at Strada della Repubblica 2/G presents the original Violetta di Parma fragrance and the Borsari collection.
Italian leather-bag house founded in 1978 in Sala Baganza, near Parma, by Giacomo Mazzieri and named for the ladybird; opened its first single-brand boutique in Milan in 1995 and had grown to 27 stores and 1,300 wholesale points by 2001.
Best for Soft-leather totes, crossbody bags and compact wallets
Coccinelle was founded in 1978 in Sala Baganza, near Parma, by Giacomo Mazzieri, who named the house for the ladybird (coccinella in Italian). The company built its identity around leather bags and accessories designed and prototyped largely by in-house, all-female teams. It opened its first single-brand boutique on Via Statuto in Milan in 1995, and by 2001 had grown to 27 single-brand stores - including locations in Paris, London and Berlin - plus around 1,300 wholesale points of sale, with foreign markets accounting for roughly 30% of turnover.
Davines develops professional haircare products in Parma, with ranges for salon use and shopping online. Its selection covers cleansing and conditioning as well as styling products for different hair types. The company identifies Parma as the place where its haircare is crafted and presents its ranges for customers shopping online or through salons.
Best for Professional haircare and styling products from Parma
Davines was founded on March 14, 1983 in Parma, Italy, by Gianni and Silvana Bollati; the company name blends the names of their children, Davide and Stefania. It began as a research laboratory producing haircare formulas for other cosmetics companies before launching its own salon-only Davines haircare line, followed in 1996 by the [comfort zone] skincare brand for spas. Davines became a Certified B Corporation in 2016. Since 2014, hero products in its Essential Haircare line have each included an ingredient sourced from an Italian Slow Food Presidium. In 2021 the company opened the European Regenerative Organic Center (EROC) in Parma, a research facility supporting regenerative organic agriculture for its ingredient supply chain.
Trading in Parma since 1956, Enoteca Galvani carries more than 1,500 labels of wine, champagne and spirits across its shop and online store. The Via Emilia Est counter keeps regular hours while rapid nationwide shipping serves buyers further afield.
Galleria Settanta has dressed men and women in Parma since 1970, running a flagship 'G70 Eurotorri' store inside the Eurotorri shopping center alongside a Langhirano branch and a plus-size outlet on Via Colorno. The multibrand shop carries labels like Colmar, Lacoste and Timberland up to size 8XL, both in-store and online.
Best for Multibrand fashion, menswear & womenswear, plus size
This Parma laboratory hand-makes fresh pasta the traditional way, from erbetta and pumpkin tortelli to Christmas anolini and gnocchi, with no industrial machinery. Two direct-sale shops on Piazza Ghiaia and Via Silvio Pellico also carry ready-cooked Parmesan dishes.
Best for Fresh pasta, tortelli, anolini, Parma gastronomy
Founded in 1899 in Piazza di Basilicanova near Parma by brothers Marcellino and Callisto Mutti, descendants of a family that had farmed tomatoes locally since the 1800s, this company registered its Due Leoni trademark in 1911 and won gold at Rome's International Industry and Agriculture Exhibition that year.
Best for Italian passata, peeled tomatoes and tomato concentrate
Mutti's tomato business traces back to Giovanni Mutti (1804-1894), a Piazza di Basilicanova farmer near Parma noted for applying early crop-rotation techniques to his land. In 1899, his nephews Marcellino and Callisto Mutti took the family's tomato growing into commercial processing, founding the company under the name Fratelli Mutti (Mutti Brothers) to preserve and sell tomato products at scale rather than sell the raw crop. The young company built its reputation quickly: in 1911 it registered its Due Leoni (Two Lions) trademark and won a First-Class Gold Medal at the International Industry and Agriculture Exhibition in Rome that same year, an early public validation of its processing methods in the tomato-growing heartland of the Po Valley. The company has remained headquartered in Basilicanova, in the province of Parma, an area whose soil and climate are associated with high-quality processing tomatoes, and continues to be controlled by the Mutti family more than a century after its founding, now selling passata, peeled tomatoes and other tomato products internationally under the Mutti name and the Due Leoni mark.
Alessandro Battistini's Parma pasticceria, open every day, fills its counter with modern tortes, mignon, macarons and hand-finished chocolates. The Via Montebello shop takes orders for special occasions and delivers across the city by cargo bike.
Baking in Parma since 1902, Provinciali turns out artisan gelato, colombe, panettoni and the city's classic Duchessa and Violetta di Parma sweets. Its Montanara premises on Via Carmignani pair the pastry counter with a cafe and cocktail bar.
Family-run Parma label reviving mid-century Italian elegance. Renowned for sartorial polo shirts with subtle embroidery, perfect one-piece collar shirts, and soft unstructured tailoring.
Best for Polo shirts, one-piece collar shirts, tailoring; Embroidered Parma polos; Polo Shirts, Sportswear
This Strada Garibaldi deli, founded in the 1950s, specialises in the Parma canon: Parmigiano Reggiano aged from 14 to 100 months, prosciutto di Parma, culatello and Felino salame. Everything is sold over the counter and shipped nationwide through the online shop.
Best for Parmigiano Reggiano, Parma ham, culatello, deli
Scrollavezza & Zanrè builds, restores and deals in violins, violas and cellos from its atelier in Parma, continuing traditions established by luthier Renato Scrollavezza, born in 1927. The studio is now run by Elisa Scrollavezza and Andrea Zanrè, with a shop at Viale Paolo Toschi 8 in Parma.
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