By ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli
L'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli
The Historical Archive of the Banco di Napoli by ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli
The Banco di Napoli Historical Archive is an irreplaceable and highly significant part of the heritage of the whole South of Italy. Its 330 document rooms, about 80 kilometers of shelving, are not just one of the most important sources for research and study of economic and social history, but contain an organic overview of 'doings', of stories, known or unknown.
the archives (2012) by Damiano Falanga - ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli
Stories ranging from 1569 to the present day and which, thanks to the system devised by the Neapolitan public banks, remained"imprisoned" in the ancient lenders' documentation, and have survived, intact and legible, up to the modern day.
Since 1819 this giant trove of documents has remained on the former site of the Banco dei Poveri, one of the parties which authored its boundless documentation, in via dei Tribunali 213, at the start of the major road through Naples.
Palazzo Ricca is the name of the historic building; it was bought in 1616 by the Banco dei Poveri to act as its own operational headquarters. A place unlike any other: next to the ancient court, Castel Capuano, where the so-called "colonna infame" monument was located, nearby which debtors were exposed to public mockery.
Over the centuries Palazzo Ricca, with the adjacent Palazzo Cuomo annexed in 1787, passed to the property of the Banco delle due Sicilie, founded in 1809.
The Archive owes its own establishment to a decree by Ferdinand I of Bourbon, on 29 November 1819, which assigned the building to the General Archive of the documents of the formerNeapolitan public banks, including those of their successor, the Banco delle Due Sicilie.
The latter institution became Banco di Napoli in 1861 and continued to preserve its own documentation at the Archive on via dei Tribunali. It was known as the General Archive until 1950, when it took the name of the Banco di Napoli Historical Archive.
One of the main tasks of the Foundation today is precisely to make the most of this enormous archived heritage. The large 'castle of papers' surrounding the Foundation's offices has, in recent years, been at the centre of a vigorous and tense intervention to disclose its treasures and allow wider consultation of its document resources.
For this purpose, in March 2016, the museum ilCartastorie was created which, through storytelling, sets itself the goal of narrating and making accessible the hidden stories in the files of theHistorical Archive to an audience of non-specialist visitors.
