The Monastery of Saint Paul, with its garden, is a very peaceful green place in the middle of the city, far away from the noises of the traffic and where a particular atmosphere can be perceived.
Once Convent of  Benedictine Nuns, the Saint Paul has been developed, throughout the centuries around the middle of the sacellum. Today its walls enclose one of the must historically complex and rich places of the city.
It was built around the year one thousand, when Sigisfredo II was the bishop of  Parma, a period during which a general reformation within the Church was appearing to be necessary.
During the Papacy of Gregorio VIII, in 1187, the Convent was under the direct protection of the Apostolic See. This fact caused a debate between the nunnies, who didn’t want to lose their autonomy, the Diocesan Curia and the Municipality.
The abbesses, elected for life, ruled over the community as real Sovereigns. They exercised a great power also over the economy of the society: they chose the administrators, they decided indipendently about real properties and revenues, furthermore they had jurusdictional power over the people subject to the Monastery.
The Monastery of Saint Paul was embellished and developed expecially during the Renaissance period, when the abbesses Cecilia, Orsina and Giovanna da Piacenza met important artists, such as Giorgio da Erba, Alessandro Araldi and above all Antonio Allegri, known as Correggio, who decorated the room of the Abbess around the year 1519.
The Renaissance was fallowed by a period of decline and with the Napoleonic suppressions the Convent was completely dismembered.
During the restoration, under the decision of Maria Luigia d’Austria, duchess of  Parma, the Church of Saint Paul became the Palatine Chapel and its name was changed in Saint Ludovico, its patron.
With the end of the Dukedom, also the Chapel lost its function and was finally closed in 1866.
In 1878 the building was acquired by the Municipality. One part of it became the seat of the training-college, another section was reserved to the girls’ boarding school and the other one, restored, became the seat of the municipalized enterprises. Nevertheless, the rooms with the fresco paintings of the Correggio and of the Araldi were reserved to the State, that ruled from this time over its opening to the public.
Starting from the second half of the years Seventies, the Municipality has given to the building a cultural function.
Today the Monastery of Saint Paul is the seat of the Agency for Tourist Information, the Informagiovani office (an office where young people can be informed about situations vacant and wanted), the Municipal Art Gallery of St. Ludovico, while in the via Melloni building side are located the Stuard picture gallery, the castle of the puppets, the town libraries “U. Guanda” and “U. Balestrazzi” and the Institute for the history of Resistance.