The National Railway Museum in Pietrarsa, the guardian of Italy’s railway history
The National Railway Museum in Pietrarsa celebrates 35 years as the guardian of Italian railway history. Inaugurated on 7 October 1989, the museum is located in the former Bourbon railway workshops, a symbol of Italy’s national railway industry and where the first Italian locomotives were assembled.
Located between Naples and Portici, nestled between the sea and Mount Vesuvius, Pietrarsa is now a landmark for enthusiasts, scholars and visitors of all ages. A treasure trove just waiting to be discovered, a go-to destination for anyone wanting to retrace a piece of Italian history and enjoy a True Italian Experience.
The museum and its treasures
The museum covers about 36,000 square metres, 14,000 of them indoors, and houses one of the largest railway collections in Europe. Steam locomotives, royal carriages and the modern “littorine” motor coaches bear witness to the different stages in the development of rail transport, the beating heart of Italy’s industrial history. Each pavilion tells a chapter in this story, from convoys on the Naples-Portici line, Italy’s first railway in 1839, to modern diesel and electric locomotives.
The jewels on display include the royal carriage, built in the twenties at the request of the Royal Family. Designed to provide comfort and luxury for sovereigns, its interiors have gilded inlays for decoration, an eight-metre long exotic mahogany table and twenty-six seats, all inside in a refined elegant blue structure. Over the years, this carriage has been turned into a presidential train, symbolising the museum’s evolution towards a new institutional identity.
Another jewel in the collection is the Bayard locomotive, an accurate reconstruction of the convoy that inaugurated the Naples-Portici line in 1839. This train, comprising first- and third-class carriages, is today one of the most popular attractions, an emblem of the ingenuity and technological progress of the time.
Pietrarsa is not just a museum, it is a hub of collective memory, where model railways allow visitors to relive history. What used to be the turning workshop now houses the ‘Trecento Treni’ model with its 40 square metres of details. It took former railway worker Otello Brunetti over 15 years to complete this masterpiece of craftsmanship and dedication.
Also on display at the museum in Pietrarsa are the famous littorine, the first motor coaches designed to replace steam traction that saw rail transport move up a gear by increasing the speed and efficiency of links on secondary lines. An evolution that helped to make the Italian railway network more accessible and sustainable.
The exhibition ends with the workshop machinery room, where visitors can admire enormous tilt hammers for forging iron, old calenders and other tools that testify to Pietrarsa’s industrial past. Here, visitors can experience what life was like in the old workshops and understand the importance of the production techniques used at the time.
The birth and history of Pietrarsa, from its Bourbon origins to its transformation into a museum, is also told in the photographs and videos stored in the archives of the Fondazione FS Italiane, which preserve the memories of the Italian railway system and bear witness to the evolution of this unique place.
__Viewer can click on the link https://we.tl/t-uiWXRTZ7 to download the Video Press Kit with free-use footage of Italian National Railway Museum in Pietrarsa
