Pietrarsa railway museum

The National Railway Museum of Pietrarsa

Museo Nazionale Ferroviario di Pietrarsa
Main exhibition hall
Established	7 October 1989
Location	Traversa Pietrarsa, Napoli, Campania, Italy
Type	Railway museum
Website	Official website

The National railway museum of Pietrarsa is situated between the cities of Naples, Portici, and San Giorgio a Cremano. It lies just to the side of the Naples-Portici railway line, the first one in Italy. Pietrarsa is an area among these villages in the past known as “Pietra Bianca” (white stone) but it was renamed Pietrarsa (burnt stone) after the eruption of the Vesuvius in 1631.

The Museum offers a fantastic experience to visitors of all ages: a fascinating journey through time among the locomotive and trains that united Italy from 1839 to modern times, spanning the 170-year history of the Italian railways.

The museum is housed in what was originally the old Bourbon workshop founded in 1840 at the command of Ferdinand II of Bourbon where steam machines for ships and boilers for locomotives were built. The workshop was organized in pavilions (where the collection is today displayed) which housed the various departments, each specializing in a different part of the production cycle.

In 1830, Ferdinand became king of the Kingdom of the two Sicilies. At the beginning, he had a small factory built in Torre Annunziata to produce steam engines for ships and ammunition for military use. This factory was part of the so many projects he undertook to renovate the Kingdom. Ferdinand II wanted to abandon the reactionary politics of his predecessors; he wanted to emancipate his Kingdom from foreign industrial and technological supremacy.

In 1837, Ferdinand decided to relocate the factory, in order to better oversee the operations, and it was transferred next to the Royal Palace of Naples. The year 1836 was so important for Italy and Italian railways. The King met the French engineer Armand Bayard, who proposed to build the first stretch of line from Naples to Nocera. On 3 October 1839, the first part of that line, from Naples to Portici, was inaugurated. Two locomotives arrived from England on this occasion: the Longridge and the Vesuvio, while the locomotive called Bayard arrived on December of the same year.

The development of the railways was so important that soon the King faced the problem of having a larger space to build a new and bigger workshop. He opted for Pietrarsa where, in 1842, the Royal Workshop for Mechanical works, nautical and locomotive production was born. The workshop run at full speed: in the middle of IXX century employed 1100 workers and it became the largest industrial pole in Italy.