Pavone has been an all-round archivist and historian. Numerous and punc­tual are the reflections that, throughout his long and industrious life, he has repeatedly made about the variegated typology of Italian archives and their respective characteristics. A part of his wide production is concerned in creation, accumulation, use and preservation of the paper archives, as well as the possible intertwining and distinctions between archives and institutions, between memory and historiography. Dense with innovative ideas is the attention he paid to use of archives as sources for specific his­torical research. Just think of his great work on the Resistance, a work that has had a vast and deserved success not only in Italy.