大象传媒

The Tuscan town of Pieve Santo Stefano is home to a very unusual collection - Italy鈥檚 National Diary Archive. It preserves diaries, letters and memoirs sent from all over the country, everything from contemporary accounts of life under lockdown to centuries-old journals, fragile with age.

Writer and translator Orla O鈥橬eill visits Pieve to delve into the archive鈥檚 holdings. She shares the intimate thoughts and reflections that she discovers - accounts of 鈥榦rdinary鈥� lives recorded in the telling, and often touching, domestic detail that tends to be omitted from textbook history.

Along the way, she meets the town鈥檚 Story Eaters 鈥� a committee of local people who read every new diary 鈥� and hears the moving story of how Pieve, once described as 鈥榯he town without memories鈥�, came to be the archive鈥檚 home.

Presenter: Orla O鈥橬eill
Producers: Orla O鈥橬eill and Cathy FitzGerald
Executive Producer: Sarah Cuddon
Mix Engineer: Mike Woolley
Sound Recording: Stefano Ferrara
Photography: Luigi Burroni
Interviewees: Luisa Oelker, Giacomo Benedetti, Lisa Marri
Readers: Tommaso Ghiazza, Alessandra Normanno, Erica De Lazzari, Alessandro Pini and Penelope Nicholson
Diary writers: Massimo Bartoletti Stella, Silvana Baldini, Luisa T. Claudio Foschini and Clelia Marchi
鈥淟u Pulverone鈥� performed by Paola Nepi

With thanks to the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale.

A White Stiletto production for 大象传媒 Radio 4.