PARMA, Italy — Eight trophies are lined up along the back wall of the museum at Parma’s Stadio Ennio Tardini. Each one is polished to perfection, placed on a plinth and bathed in a soft spotlight, picking out the glint of silver and the gleam of gold. The effect is one of deep reverence, an almost holy glow.
They are the museum’s focal point, its culmination and conclusion. All of the other displays — montages of past glories, portraits of beloved faces, iconic jerseys preserved in glass cabinets — build up to them. It is to those trophies that all of Parma’s history leads.