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Europe · The modern states

Duchy of Parma and Piacenza

1545–1859

Created in 1545 by Pope Paul III (Alessandro Farnese) for his son Pier Luigi Farnese, carved from papal territory. The Farnese ruled until the male line died out in 1731, when the duchy passed (via Elisabetta Farnese) toward the Spanish Bourbons.

Existed
1545–1859
Shown on the map
1815–1847, 1849–1859 (2 periods)
Peak area
7k km²
Region
Europe

Overview

Created in 1545 by Pope Paul III (Alessandro Farnese) for his son Pier Luigi Farnese, carved from papal territory. The Farnese ruled until the male line died out in 1731, when the duchy passed (via Elisabetta Farnese) toward the Spanish Bourbons. After Napoleonic upheaval, the Congress of Vienna (1815) granted the duchy for life to Marie Louise of Austria, Napoleon's second wife, whose comparatively benevolent reign (d. 1847) is well remembered; it then reverted to the Bourbon-Parma line. The duchy was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia/Italy in 1859–1860 during unification.

Common questions

What was the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza?
Created in 1545 by Pope Paul III (Alessandro Farnese) for his son Pier Luigi Farnese, carved from papal territory. The Farnese ruled until the male line died out in 1731, when the duchy passed (via Elisabetta Farnese) toward the Spanish Bourbons.
When did the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza exist?
The Duchy of Parma and Piacenza existed 1545–1859. On this map it is drawn 1815–1847, 1849–1859.
How large was the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza?
At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza covered about 7,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.

Sources

This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia and the scholarship of Donald Queller, Thomas Madden and Jonathan Harris on the Fourth Crusade, whose post-conspiracy reading of 1204 this document follows. The article this entry is anchored on:

This entry was last updated .

This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made

Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.

Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).

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