Our archive grows and becomes more and more technological, but the fascination of a typed tissue continues to excite us.

"Archives, understood as a testimony of human activity, have always existed because the archive serves man for his daily activity" (wikipedia)

Don't you find this definition of an archive curious? We tend, in more recent times, to think of the archive as a place of the buen retiro where files, photographs, documents and everything else that has lost its daily usefulness. And yet we find in this definition an absolutely alive vision, essential "serves man for his daily activity". Now, we are a museum and the archive is a fundamental organ of such an institution and it is normal to feed it and dedicate time to it, but stop for a second to think about how many archives remain secret, how much knowledge remains hidden. We have to ask ourselves if the very essence of the archive is the knowledge of what it can contain and that differentiates it from being a mere repository.

In the photo the "Cartastorie", archive of the Banco di Napoli (Museimpresa)

The technology and the new possibilities it offers, have made it possible to unveil art, knowledge and culture, fuelling a hunger for discovery that hadn't been seen for a long time, and this is demonstrated by the thousands of accesses that virtual visits to the world's largest museums have recorded in these days of closure/closure. For this reason also the Fratelli Cozzi Museum has been working for some time on the digitalization of the archive that will be partly available for web consultation. The entire archive has been physically and digitally organized through the work of a professional archivist and a lot of material has also been photographed and scanned: there are over 300 posters and over 1000 photographs ready for the next publication on the pages of our site. There is still a lot of work to be done in order to consult everything online and be accessible to everyone, everywhere.

But don't worry, we will never lose the pleasure of caressing a tissue, smelling the scent of paper, marveling at finding vintage correspondence and articles, as you see in the opening video, dedicated to 1750. Would you like to see it again with us?