Antica Spezieria di San Giovanni, Historical pharmacy at San Giovanni Evangelista, Parma, Italy
The Antica Spezieria di San Giovanni is an old monastery pharmacy within the Benedictine monastery of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma, spread across four exhibition rooms. The rooms display original furnishings, glass vessels, stone mortars, and ancient recipe books from different periods.
The monastery was founded in 980, and the pharmacy began producing medicines about two centuries later. Over time it became an important center for medical knowledge in the region.
The rooms reveal how monks cultivated healing herbs and made medicines, showing their role as healers in the community. You can see how these practices were woven into monastic life across generations.
The location is at Borgo Pipa 1/A in central Parma and is easily reached on foot from the cathedral. The rooms are compact, so a visit takes about one to two hours and you can comfortably view all the displays.
Part of the display shows recipes and techniques that are remarkably similar to modern herbal medicine practices, revealing how advanced the monks' knowledge truly was. These parallels to today's methods surprise many visitors.
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