Early nineteenth-century Napoleonic maps of the Duchy of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla showed it as a “pizzicagnolo”, meaning that it made and sold salumi, but in the first census of unified Italy in 1864, it had become an inn. Having also been a grocer’s, a café, a post office and a public telephone centre, it embodies the history of the lower Parma area, with ancient recipes and delicious “Culatello di Zibello”, a speciality for six generations. Adored by Gassman, Tognazzi, and the writer Bevilacqua, it is still in the ancient family farmhouse in the Reggia district of Colorno, where Napoleon’s wife Marie Louise once lived.
