ilCartastorie | Museum of the Banco di Napoli Historical Archives was created to promote the patrimony of stories found in the documents from the ancient Neapolitan public banks which were later combined to make the Banco di Napoli.

Banco di Napoli Foundation and the Museum are located in Palazzo Ricca, a 16th century building in the heart of Naples. Here are guarded hundreds of thousands of payments from 1573 to the present.

Thanks to the detailed reasons for payment which were written on every transaction, the Banco di Napoli Historical Archives contains information about every aspect of life in Naples and Southern Italy since the middle of the 1500s; information ranging from economics to art, which tells the stories of the lives of noblemen and shopkeepers.

The core of ilCartastorie is the permanent multimedia exhibiit created by Stefano Gargiulo (Kaos Productions) and entitled Kaleidos. The sensory experience, made up of videos and sounds, which shows some stories taken from the Archives. The visitor walks “in the story”, in a space made of old volumes and “paper kebabs”.  The museum offers a journey between San Gennaro and Vesuvius, between Caravaggio and the Veiled Christ.

In addition to the permanent exhibit, ilCartastorie is a cultural project that is composed by many activities: theatre performances, artists in residence, creative writing workshops, film shorts, guided tours (some with theatre), and events with historical themes.

The cultural and promotional activities carried out by ilCartastorie were awarded the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Awards 2017, the most important recognition in the field.