The deliberate, senseless destruction of the documents belonging to the Grande Archivio di Stato of Naples is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, single crime against history committed by the German army during the late war. The circumstances and the results of the act which reduced to ashes this vast collection of records of Southern Italy, covering more than a thousand years, are not as widely known among scholars, much less the general public, as they should be, and they seem therefore to call for some brief account in order to explain the reason of the present publication. Evacuated because of the dangers of air-warfare over Naples from the Archivio to the Villa Montesano near to S. Paolo Belsito some thirty kilometres away, and packed for the most part into 866 solid cases, this priceless treasure of over 30,000 MS. volumes and 50,000 documents under the charge of a keeper of Archives remained undiscovered by the German command until the Allied troops were already approaching.

On 28 September, 1943, however, a foraging party came to the Villa in search of calves wanted for food and found instead cases of records stored for safety. Next morning an officer accompanied by a single soldier arrived; he ordered one of the chests to be opened and carefully inspected the volumes packed within. After the purely historical nature of the deposit had been explained to him and its immense importance from this point of view, he professed himself satisfied and departed.