For the Neapolitan jurist and historian Pietro Giannone, the key to the future of the Kingdom of Naples lay in the understanding of the past. But the radical ideas in his Storia del regno di Napoli (1723) and other works cost him his freedom. The paper focuses on the development of the concept of cultural and civil history as a vehicle for change in the age of Giannone and his countryman Giambattista Vico.