Coinvolgere una città – esaltare una dinastia. Le pubbliche celebrazioni per lo sposalizio di Ferdinando I di Borbone e Maria Amalia d’Asburgo (1769) nelle carte dell’Archivio di Stato di Parma

In the summer 1769, the wedding of Ferdinand I of Bourbon and Maria Amalia von Habsburg took place in Parma. The prime minister Guillaume-Léon Du Tillot orchestrated the celebrations. Several editions for the marriage were published by the royal printing house, such as the Descrizione delle feste celebrate in Parma l'anno MDCCLXIX per le auguste nozze di [...] don Ferdinando col reale arciduchessa Maria Amalia. This essay compares such a public festivals’ official description with the information provided on the subject by numerous documents in the Parma State Archive drawn up by several agents and the reports appeared on the Gazzetta di Parma. The aim is to investigate how the city welcomed the new duchess by involving the entire population in the celebrations, whose social bodies were represented by different spectacles organized by the prime minister, promoter of a celebratory machine, whose operating modalities, purposes, and even intentions of better propaganda effectiveness for the subsequent city celebrations dedicated to the Bourbons can be illustrated