The "Glauco Lombardi" Museum Foundation has its headquarters in a few rooms of the great complex known as Palazzo di Riserva that was already shown on the topographical maps of the 17th century as part of the property of the duchy and part of the articulated system of buildings used for the life of the Farnese court ( Palazzo Ducale, Palazzo della Pilotta, Chiesa di San Pietro Martire, Palazzo del Giardino). At that time, there were a number of court apartments in the building, guest lodgings for some of the important visitors of the sovereigns and the theater, built by Stefano Lolli in 1687 and demolished after the construction of the Teatro Regio (1821-1829). The rooms that now house the Museum were transformed in 1764, by the architect E.A. Petitot on orders of Duke Philip of Bourbon and his powerful minister G. Du Tillot, into a gambling hall for noblemen and courtesans.
The architect from Lyons gave this part of the building the rigorous neoclassical aspect that still characterizes it in spite of the subsequent, often traumatic transformation undergone by the entire building (for example, the theater was demolished and a Post Office was installed, then the great stairway leading to the upper floor was torn down and the upper floor itself was completely transformed after Italian Unification to make room for government offices. Later the southern façade was shortened in 1906 so that a street could be run through, now via Pisacane).
It was Duke Charles III of Bourbon Parma (1849-1854) who ordered the Nobles' Lodge to be converted into his private residence. The work was entrusted to the architect P. Gazola: thus it was in the mid 19th century that what are now the exhibition rooms of the Museum took on the appearance, size and arrangement that they now have. The Palazzo di Riserva, now government property, houses, in addition to the "Glauco Lombardi" Museum Foundation, some of the offices of the Postal Service, the provincial headquarters of the Forestry Service, a Literary and Conversation Circle and several shops. During operations of restoration that involved the rooms that house the Lombardi Museum (1997-1999) some very interesting remains were uncovered, pertaining to a Roman domus, as well as fragments of late Gothic art that testify to the presence in the zone, from very ancient times, of structures built and transformed many times over the centuries.