If you really think about it, everyone listened to stories long before they started writing them.

“Once upon a time, a long long ago…”

…is the beginning of a fable, of an imaginative tale, or a story.

Whoever told these tales carried out what is formally called ‘storytelling’. Lately, at least in the field of museum studies, people are talking about storytelling, underlining its strengths and weaknesses, but it is actually very simple: it means telling a story that evokes emotions, explains why, and illustrates how to make the listener want to look for something more.

Hidden in its hundreds of rooms, between the walls of paper and towers of volumes, the Historical Archives contains tens of thousands of stories. Stories about Naples past and present, which provide the colours for an illustration of four centuries of history.

IlCartastorie opens the cashiers’ copybooks and main ledgers from times past and awakens the “paper giants” so that their stories can be told, the memories can be shared, and the history of the city of Naples can be enjoyed by everyone.