Your diet starts in 37 hours. Synonymous with famous delicacies and culinary legends — Parma ham, Parmesan cheese, Lambrusco wine, the Barilla pasta company, the Alma cooking school — this fetching northern Italian city last year was named a Unesco Creative City for Gastronomy, the first city in Italy to receive the honor. Numerous traditional restaurants and fine-food boutiques assure that no belly goes empty, and on Parma's outskirts you'll find museums related to everything from cured pork products to tomatoes.

But the city, which was home to talents as diverse as the Renaissance painter Correggio and the 20th-century conductor Arturo Toscanini, also nourishes other appetites — religious, artistic, theatrical, musical, historical — given its wealth of ornate churches and monasteries, an excellent fine-arts museum, and a celebrated theater. Digest it all while pounding the pavement. The compact riverside city is a pleasure to walk.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/