  After a couple of years of quiescence, the soft gamma repeater SGR 1900+14
suddenly reactivated on 18 April 2001, with the emission of a very intense,
long and modulated flare, only second in intensity and duration to the 27
August 1998 giant flare. BeppoSAX caught the large flare with its Gamma Ray
Burst Monitor and with one of the Wide Field Cameras. The Wide Field Cameras
also detected X-ray bursting activity shortly before the giant flare. A target
of opportunity observation was started only 8 hours after the large flare with
the Narrow Field Instruments, composed of two 60-ks long pointings. These two
observations show an X-ray afterglow of the persistent SGR 1900+14 source,
decaying with time according to a power law of index -0.6.
