In 1587, during the rule of Duke Alessandro Farnese, the Stato Pallavicino, an absolute monarchy feudal state in northwestern Emilia, encompassing the Marchesates of Busseto and Cortemaggiore, was annexed into the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza.

[3] Alessandro died far from Parma on 3 December 1592 from gangrene caused by an arquebus ball during the Siege of Can de Bec, a year before his death he ordered the construction of the fortress of the Citadel with the aim of affirming the power of the family but also to provide work to a labor force of 2,500 people made up mostly of the poor sections of the city population.

[4][5] These were difficult years for the duchy, in addition to the terrible plague of 1630 which decimated the population, the new duke maintained an army of 6,000 infantry and to finance it he forced his subjects into severe deprivation, getting into debt with bankers and merchants.

During his reign, Ranuccio II bought precious paintings and volumes, he moved most of the works belonging to the family collections preserved in the Roman residences to Parma and in 1688 the new Ducal Theater was inaugurated.

[7][8] Three years before his death, thanks to the mediation of the ambassador Count Fabio Perletti, Odoardo had married Countess Palatine Dorothea Sophie of Neuburg, with whom he had two children: Alessandro, who died at the age of eight months, and Elisabeth.

On 11 December 1694, upon the sudden death of Ranuccio II, the duchy then passed into the hands of the just sixteen-year-old second son Francesco, who married the widow of his brother Dorothea.

Having inherited a disastrous financial situation, in order to try to heal it he cut all the unnecessary expenses of the court by firing most of the servants, musicians, jesters and dwarves.

A hydraulic work was built to defend the city of Piacenza from the erosion of the Po, the expansion of the University of Parma and the Collegio dei Nobili was favored, encouraging the study of public law, history, languages and geography.

He ruled his territories for four years until the end of the War of the Polish Succession, when, according to what was established in the Treaty of Vienna (1738), he handed over both duchies to the House of Habsburg in exchange for the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily.

Ferdinand maintained his throne under French military governors until the Treaty of Aranjuez of 1801, when a general agreement between the House of Bourbon and Napoleon formally decided the cession of the duchy to France in exchange for Tuscany, but the Duke remained in Parma until he died in 1802.

It was the only case in Italy where the ruling monarchs were successfully driven out by two consecutive uprisings, both in 1848 and 1859: the reasons behind this are to be found both in the rising aspiration for Italian unification and a strong despise towards the Bourbons, after the less reactionary reign of Marie Louise.