The Leonardo da Vinci International Library

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Learning for the poor in the neglected quarters of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil

Rua Porto dos Tainheiros, 36
Ribeira
Salvador (BA) Brazil

www.icbie.com

The heart of the Institute of Culture Brazil Italy Europe is the Leonardo da Vinci International Library, with its 12,000 books, CDs, DVDs and Videos in different European languages. It provides a reading, learning and research center for the impoverished residents of Salvador de Bahia. Located five miles from the city center in Ribeira, it is the only library in a large area comprising Bomfin, Ribeira, Uruguai, and the Alagados, where the appalling lack of cultural opportunities compounds the many problems of poverty and exclusion.

A Different Slant on Official Culture

An Intellectual's Library Serving the Favelas

Pietro Gallina has collected (and read!) books during his entire life, and especially amidst frequent travels throughout Europe and the Americas. This impressive library was shipped from Italy to Salvador and forms the core of the da Vinci Library. The ICBIE does not use this intellectual resource as a covenant for the high learning of the advanced cultures of the planet, but rather as a tool for the empowerment of a repressed society that has its own kind of genius, inquisitiveness and heritage, in the hope that a grass-roots use of academic learning can insure the survival of a vital and compelling native culture.