La Villetta, the monumental cemetery at Parma, takes its
name after the farm that
Duchess Marie Louise
of Austria (Napoleon's second wife), who ruled the city
from 1816 to 1847, chose
as the site for the city's burial ground.
The first burials took place
in March 1818, during a
typhus epidemics that
ravaged the town.
The final design (1818)
outlined an enclosure that
was square on the outside
and octagonal inside,
with 156 arcades hosting
the chapels of important,
wealthy families and of
religious confraternities,
and four fields for the
common people.

By the end of 1868, the building was completed.
In the late XIX century, two galleries were added to expand the cemetery north- and southwards. In the 1930s a new enclosure, with a number of arches, was built on the north side.
A number of important personalities, some of them
of world renown, are buried
at La Villetta, first and
foremost Niccolò Paganini
and Ildebrando Pizzetti.
Sometimes, visitors hear
music coming from the section  hosting Paganini's tomb:
it's a young violinist paying
homage to the great Maestro.