SORAGNA:  General Info || Synagogue ||  Jewish Museum 
|| How to get there || About Soragna || Rocca di Soragna(1) , (2) 
|| Soragna on the Net

1SORAGNA - AN IMPORTANT AGRICULTURAL 
  CENTER WITH ANCIENT ORIGINS

It is cited in a diploma of Liutprando from the year 712; in 1198 it became the property of the Lupi family. The oldest part of the town, with typical buildings radiating around the central "Voltone", dates from the 17^th century. Near the grandiose Rocca are the city hall, 18^th century with its wide arcades; the San Giacomo Parish Church, baroque in style with a solid square shape, built in the middle of the 1700s; the Church of San Rocco, from the second half of the 1600s with a fine main altar, baroque, ornate with beautiful inlays of precious marble; and the Jewish Synagogue, inaugurated in 1855, with the adjacent important Jewish Museum, gathering together, in seven sections, documents and objects of the Parma Jewish community from 1555 to WWII.

2ROCCA DI SORAGNA
Article 1:
The Soragna Rocca (fortress), just off the main street in the centre of town, is a square structure with four towers at its corners and one in the centre of the façade, flanked by a wide moat on its south and east sides.
It was built about 1385 by the marquis Bonifacio and Antonio Lupi on licence from Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and is still owned by the noble family of its founders, who, in 1347, were granted feudal privileges over the land, which they governed until Napoleon suppressed the aristocracy.

Transformed into a luxurious princely castle at the end of the 1600s, it was further modified in the 17^th and 18^th centuries by the Meli Lupi princes who still own it and who have opened the building to public visits.

A stone bridge, built in the 17^th century to substitute the draw-bridge of the old fortress, leads into the arcaded courtyard of the Rocca, graced with statues of mythological and allegorical subjects.
On the ground floor is the Salone degli stucchi (hall of stuccoes) with frescoes by Ferdinando and Francesco Galli Bibiena, done in 1696; the grandiose Poets' Gallery, built in 1792, has busts of the great poets and frescoes illustrating their works.

On the upper floor are three interconnecting galleries decorated by the Bibienas illustrating the feats of the Meli Lupi family, and from here we enter the noble apartment consisting of a Throne room, a Gilded parlour and the Alcove, all complete with original furniture from the 1600s and 1700s.
Like every respectable castle, Soragna too has its ghost. She is known as "Donna Cenerina", so named for her ash-blonde hair. Her real name was Cassandra Marinoni, assassinated in 1573 by her brother-in-law Giulio Anguissola in a dispute over money. Legend narrates that the ghost appears every time a member of the Meli Lupi family dies.