River
Fluvius Paala
Parma
Listen to the story
A copyist's slip hides behind Fluvius Paala: the river is the Parma, and the scribe who copied the map around 1200 seems to have misread the name in his original. The town beside it fared little better, turning up at the neighbouring road station as Parna, with an n in place of the m. The river rises in the Apennines, its name written over the source, winds across the road between Fidentia, now Fidenza, and that station, and joins the Po. Oddly, the far larger Taro, which flows between this river and the Rigonum, is left out altogether.