Leonardo da Vinci International Library
The main objective of the Leonardo da Vinci International Library, with its large and precious bibliographic and multimedia collection, is to become a hub for cultural aggregation in the Lower City of Salvador, stimulating education and encouraging reading and research in all areas of human knowledge, in an intense exchange of knowledge of Italian and European cultural heritage with that of Brazil and South America.
The Library is non-profit and aims to provide a public service to readers and researchers, schools and universities, organizing cultural and artistic events and language courses.
Since July 2023, ICBIE has been able to count on a quality team to bring life back to our Library, which had its activities paralyzed during the pandemic and after the loss of our founder Pietro Gallina in 2022. The family of our friend and collaborator José Paranaguá, made up of his wife Shirley and their daughters Iamani and Irani, took time out of their schedules to carry out maintenance, cleaning and reorganizing the collection.
Unity was strength and goodwill gave life, as from November 2023, the librarian Lucileide Santos Libório joined this team. In her first months as a volunteer, she began the process of cleaning, storing, repairing and classifying our library’s collection with great professionalism.
On May 15, 2024, the library was awarded the Ponto de Leitura 2023 Award through the MinC (Ministry of Culture) Call for Proposals No. 6/2023 with the project “Books and reading on the Itapagipe Peninsula”, which made it possible to continue working in the library until at least March 2025.
Your donation will be useful and necessary to continue and intensify this work of cataloging and maintaining the collection so that the library can be opened up to the public, offering more activities through, for example, the creation of the Book Circle. The idea is to form a collective of people interested in discussing books and literature, choosing a book each month, but also hosting other types of activities such as book launches, poetry readings and recitations, film screenings, among other possibilities.
“A nation that doesn’t read and study remains ignorant and will always be dominated, humiliated and submissive to the masters of politics and the economy” – Pietro Gallina
The Leonardo da Vinci International Library, an integral part of the ICBIE, is made up of a collection of extraordinary multiplicity and richness, with around 16,000 titles in various languages (Portuguese, Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, etc.). 000 titles in various languages (Portuguese, Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, etc.), as well as a support collection of CDs, LPs and DVDs, which cover cultural aspects of various areas of human knowledge: music, theater and ballet: international encyclopedias, magazines, biographies and essays with scores for orchestra, piano, operettas, musical comedies, operas, symphonic and chamber music, opera librettos, mostly classical and contemporary European and also jazz and Brazilian and international popular music; literature in original languages or in Italian and Portuguese versions; with important works on psychology, sociology, communication, linguistics, history, politics and philosophy, geography, fine arts, tourism, photography, fashion, religion, cinema, essays on aesthetic criticism – a collection of old books from the 18th and 19th centuries.
With the exception of recent donations that have further enriched the Brazilian literature section, the Library’s entire collection – owned by journalist and musicologist Pietro Gallina – was brought to Brazil on a ship from Salerno, Italy, bound for Salvador.
The Library, together with the ICBIE, is located on the outskirts of Salvador in the old and beautiful Ribeira neighborhood, with little cultural infrastructure, and so it becomes a place of extreme importance because it helps to make up for the lack of places for research, study and various courses that involve the community in an interactive, participatory and creative process, contributing to socio-cultural development and a better quality of life.
The library is housed in a large room in the old ICBIE building. The room is well ventilated and has air conditioning to help preserve the books and provide a pleasant environment for the public. Opposite the library is the reading room with two large tables and several chairs used for browsing and reading books, as well as being the perfect place for soirees, round table discussions and book launches. The reading room is well lit, quiet and ventilated to ensure maximum comfort for readers.
The library wants to cater for anyone interested in studying languages, music, philosophy and the arts. The library is available for visits by groups, both school and non-school groups, by appointment.
The public that frequents the Library is mainly made up of ICBIE students and former students who live in the neighborhood or nearby, but it also serves a wider public such as university students looking for a specific text not found in the city’s Libraries or in those of the same University. The Library also arouses the interest of people who are curious to get to know an environment as peculiar and fascinating as a traditional, analog library and outside the conventional digital habits that permeate all current human activities.
