MEMORY CENTER

The purpose of the Dante Alighieri College Memory Centre (CM-CDA) is to organize and preserve documents from the school, making them available for research.

Created at the end of 2006 with a view to organizing events for the school’s centenary, which took place in 2011, the Memory Centre currently has a collection of documents dating back to the years before the founding of the Istituto Medio Italo-Brasiliano Dante Alighieri.

The collection originates from documents produced at the school in the course of its activities, by people linked to the institution, and donations from former teachers, students and staff.

Over 17,000 photographs have been preserved, organized, and digitized, depicting the daily life of the institution, events, and the architectural complex. The oldest ones date back to the mid-1910s. Part of this iconographic archive is now available for searching in the CDA library’s database.

The historical collection includes more than 3,000 documents, such as statutes, correspondence, newspapers, notebooks, administrative documents, invitations, diplomas, booklets, etc.

There is also a diverse collection of items representing the school’s material culture, such as laboratory equipment and items, trophies, medals, furniture, uniforms, among others. In addition, the Memory Center’s collection includes an archive of interviews and testimonies from former students, teachers and staff, who recount their life experiences and their relationship with Colégio Dante Alighieri, as well as a bibliographic collection of old works used at the school, including literary works, teaching manuals, and catalogs of laboratory instruments.

In addition to collecting materials from the school itself, the Memory Center accepts donations of documents and objects that help tell the story of the institution, such as photos, books, furniture, school articles, videos, drawings, etc.