ilCartastorie | Banco di Napoli Historical Archive Museum

The Archives (2012) by Damiano Falanga - Fondazione ilCartastorie ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

 ilCartastorie, the Banco di Napoli Historical Archive Museum, created to enhance the enormous heritage of stories and characters kept in the writings of the long-standingNeapolitan public banks.

Kaleidos (2012) by Damiano Falanga - Fondazione ilCartastorie ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

ilCartastorie, using each channel of dissemination available, from multimedia to creative writing, restores, to the city and to the whole world, the voices, stories and events immortalized in the countless pages of the tomes in the Banco di Napoli's HistoricalArchive.

Barchetta (2012) by Damiano Falanga - ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

The museum at the Banco di Napoli Historical Archive intends to give value to the contents and research found in the Archive and thanks to the Archive itself, through a process of spreading culture and knowledge through storytelling.

Stories about Slavery (2016) by Damiano Falanga - ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

Stories to tell through the communication channels as well as the artistic and expressive forms available, addressing different segments of the public in different ways and creating an experience of wonder and astonishment for them which is not disconnected from sense and meaning.

Tableau Vivant (2012) by Damiano Falanga - ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

The museum's strategy can be defined as trans-media because, with the competitive advantage fixed on the desire to tell stories, these will be conveyed and adapted to the following expressive channels/tools/methods, with the idea of diversifying the offering and appealing to different types of recipients, leveraging different languages but also different methods. Multimedia, theatrical performances, artist residencies, thematic and theatrical guided tours, creative writing workshops, concerts, historical events.

The permanent multimedia exhibition, Kaleidos (2016) by Damiano Falanga - ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

On 30 March 2016the permanent multimedia exhibition, the true heart of the Historical ArchiveMuseum, was inaugurated. The project, carried out for the Foundation by Stefano Gargiulo Kaos Produzioni, can be found on the first floor of the Archive. A sensory experience, made up o images and sounds, which reveals the presences and the items kept in the Archive. Amaze of rooms which traces the labyrinth of individual and collective memory. The City invades the Archive by multiplying the space indefinitely, that infinite "outside" which has been the scene of millions of stories stored in theVolumes.

Angolo Cuomo (2012) by Damiano Falanga - ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

With "Angolo Cuomo", ilCartastorie has expand edits range of multimedia content on Naples' history.Here there are four chapters. The first is dedicated to Angelo Carasale, impresario of the Teatro di San Carlo. The second is dedicated to the Pala Radolovich, a work commissioned but never found (or perhaps never created) by the famous painter Caravaggio, artistically recreated on the basis of a detailed payment reason of 1606, the only trace discovered so far.The third chapter tells of the "Neapolitan Revolution" from the point of view of Vincenzo d'Andrea, one of the main protagonists of the revolution of 1647 and the subsequentSerenissima Repubblica Napoletana: an immersion in the brief story of Tommaso of Amalfi, known as Masaniello. The fourth multimedia presentation, "Digging among the papers", has as its protagonist Rocco Gioacchino Alcubierre, who narrates the events which, in 1738, led to him finding the remains of ancient Herculaneum.

Moltitudini (2012) by Damiano Falanga - ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

In 2016 the photographerAntonio Biasiucci created an artist's residency for ilCartastorie, curated by Gianluca Riccio, the double exhibition route Codex -Multitudes. The latter is the site-specific installation set up at the headquarters of the Banco di Napoli Foundation.The visitor accesses a completely dark environment brought alive by the appearance of hundreds of faces and things, projected directly onto the surface of the ancient documents which envelop the space, and which end up animating and giving life to the 17 million identities kept in the Archive: a place of memories which becomes the repository for all humanity.

Residenza musicale (2012) by Damiano Falanga - ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

So far two musical residencies have been created within the framework of the ilCartastorie project. The first is the piece "La storia e la bellezza" (History and Beauty) by Maldestro. The title recalls the evocative beauty of a world made of paper and all the stories contained within the pages and between the walls of the largest historical banking archive in the world. The second residency consists of the piece "Il mio Dio è donna" (My God is a Woman) by La Bestia Carenne. The song features the mysterious figure of Monsù Desiderio, a painter active in Naples in the seventeenth century, whose pseudonym is overlaid by the personalities of François de Nomé, Louis Croys and Didier Barra, whose stories are intertwined with the payments kept inside the Banco di Napoli Historical Archive.

Premio Europa nostra (2012) by Damiano Falanga - ilCartastorie foundation ©ilCartastorie | Museo dell'Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli

For its innovative approach and for the reproducible idea for other cultural heritage of this nature, ilCartastorie won the European Union Award for CulturalHeritage / Europa Nostra Awards 2017, the most important European award in the sector.It also received the Financial Cultural Heritage Award, the Culture + Enterprise Award and was selected for the Best in Heritage Conference 2018.

Credits: Story

Si ringrazia:
- Antonio Biasiucci
- La Bestia Carenne, nel video musicale de "Il mio Dio è donna".

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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