The Little Diary Museum

The Little Diary Museum that is part of the National Diary Archive and is located in the town of Pieve Santo Stefano. It is an interactive museum that welcomes visitors of all ages with multisensory exhibits that aim to narrate the memories housed there. On a visit to this museum, you’ll be guided through the words of the diary writers as they describe different events of their lives, complete with sounds, voices and lights. The diary writers lead the visitor on an intimate journey,  revealing a constant confrontation between the writer and their past. 

In a constant dialogue between present and past, the museum has been awarded as The Most Innovative Museum in Italy, has obtained the patronage of the Presidency of the Republic and has been included – by the Ministry of Culture – among the Most Important Cultural Centres in Italy.

Here you’ll find the stories of Italian “common folk.”  These diaries were written by people just like us and these private accounts give us an intimate look at  the last two hundred years of life in Italy. Open any drawer in the museum and you find yourself immersed in another person’s life, with stories from soldiers, women, children, laborers and dreamers. There’s the famous “bedsheet diary” by Clelia Marchi, a peasant woman who wrote about one night of her life on a bedsheet that came from her wedding trunk and measures almost two meters wide. Another famous treasure here is the “Terramatta” diary by Vincenzo Rabito. This work, by a semi-illiterate Sicilian, came to be considered one of the most extraordinary pieces of popular literature in Italy. A visit to this museum reminds us that we are all part of the human race and that the passage of time, wars, joyous moments and monumental changes do not change the fact that we are all part of the same story.