Our Story

In 1839 the Music School of Piacenza was officially born by the "Deputation of the Communicative Theater", today the Municipal Theater of Piacenza.

The music school, after being housed starting in 1845 in the premises of the former convent of Sant'Agostino, reached its definitive headquarters in 1865 in an ancient cloistered monastery for women located in the Santa Franca district. In 1900 it changed its name to "Municipal School of Music", detaching itself from the theatrical institution, and in 1933 it was transformed into a Liceo Musicale, named after Giuseppe Nicolini, equal to the government conservatories.

In 1977, with Law 663, the process of nationalization was concluded and the name was changed to a conservatory. Following the reform law n. 508/99 and subsequent decrees, the "Nicolini" Conservatory, recognized as a higher institute of musical studies and included in the Higher Artistic and Musical Education (AFAM) system, is the "primary seat of higher education, specialization and research in the artistic and musical sector" and carries out "correlated production activities" (L. 508/99, art. 2, c. 4) [1]. As such, it has acquired statutory autonomy and has launched, alongside the exhaustive statutory study paths, the new three-year first level and two-year second level courses, which allow for the acquisition of academic diplomas equivalent to the corresponding three-year and master's degrees.

The progressive expansion of the Conservatory has allowed the "Nicolini" to acquire a pre-eminent role, making it the largest of the first circle conservatories around Milan (the others are those of Como, Brescia and Novara). This primacy has also been consolidated thanks to a top-notch teaching class which, in the past, has included musicians such as the tenor Gianni Poggi, the conductor and musicologist Alberto Zedda (later artistic director of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan), the violinist Fabio Biondi, to cite just a few examples, and which continues to the present day with teachers who attract students from all over Italy and even from abroad.

Currently, the "Nicolini" -among other things, the only university entirely in Piacenza- can count on about a hundred teachers, of whom seventy-seven in the first level, three in the second level and around twenty contractors. Among the equipment available to the institute are three organs (among which that of the Salone, built in 1975, was for a long time the largest mechanical transmission organ in Italy), two Steinway grand pianos and numerous " mezza coda", a library which combines the normal school function with the conservation of valuable historical collections (often consulted by Italian and foreign scholars), as well as a professional multimedia station dedicated to recording, digital editing and audio post-production.