The National Railway Museum of Pietrarsa, is the founding place of Italian railway history because it is located near Portici, the arrival point of the first railway built in Italy (October 1839). The buildings are the remains of a prestigious industry, a true glory of what was once the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the ancient workshops of Pietrarsa (1840). Entering this place means experiencing a sort of historical recovery that brings us back in time to the world of the nineteenth-century mechanical workshop.

The decline of the steam train also marked the end of the Pietrarsa workshops. The reconversion of the plant to new technologies would have been too expensive, and in November 1975 they were closed. In 1977 the proposal to transform industrial buildings into a museum. The works for the transformation of the structure, to the new destination began in 1980 and in October 1989 the Museum was opened to the public.

On March 31, 2017, the President of the Italian Republic, inaugurates the end of the architectural restoration of the entire complex of the National Railway Museum of Pietrarsa. With the intervention of the Fondazione FS Italiane, the Museum has seen a real rebirth, and in 2018 there were over 170.000 people who, from all over the world, they have crossed the gates of the Museum.