Back in downtown Manizales with spaces, services and collections for all

Banco de la República opens its new Cultural Center in Manizales, with spaces for everyone’s delight: the library, an exhibition hall, an auditorium, a creative room, the children's room, and a bookstore. It is a place to listen to music, visit art exhibits, experiment with technology, research, read peacefully, learn about archaeological heritage, and become inspired. 

The library is the soul of the Cultural Center, featuring a specialized collection of the Coffee Cultural Landscape, which seeks to promote research, dissemination, and preservation of this regional heritage recognized by UNESCO.

The exhibition room has all the technical specifications to showcase original works; it will alternately house archaeological exhibitions of the Gold Museum and art exhibits. Additionally, it will feature a video wall visible from Carrera 23, which serves as an extra space to expose digital art. The inaugural exhibition, Decir el lugar. Testimonios del paisaje colombiano, includes works from the art collection of Banco de la República and the Art Museum of Caldas. The latter were generously lent to the Bank to make them known in the country. 

The new building was specially designed to provide cultural and architectural services. Its design is an abstraction of the traditional coffee-producing hacienda: it is surrounded by balconies that allow for a 360° view that evokes memorable places of the city. The building is friendly to the environment: it produces photovoltaic energy, has management systems of gray waters, green terraces, and a network infrastructure that allows for optimization of resources as well as to cause less impact on the environment. 

This cultural center is part of the strongest cultural network of Colombia.

The new cultural center in Manizales provides all the cultural services offered by Banco de la República's network. The library serves researchers, creators, children, and the public; also, it provides access to all materials at the Luis Angel Arango Library and its network of libraries in the country, which represents access to more than two million physical books and a virtual library with databases, digital books, children’s multimedia, and academic archives, among other things. The network serves 20 million users annually. 

Students and researchers will be able to access the patrimonial files of the entire network and get in touch with other researchers and libraries. Among other benefits, members of the library network may request simultaneous external loan of up to 15 items, which may include books (for 30 days), and CDs and DVDs (for seven days).

The public in Manizales will be able to enjoy art and archeology exhibitions with original works from Banco de la República’s art collection and from the Gold Museum as well. Similarly, the city will enjoy the national concert season and all the technical and research capacity that characterizes this cultural network. 

Several of the Cultural Center's spaces and programs seek to promote creation with the public. Responding to the new ways offered by technology to relate with our heritage, and thanks to the creative potential of the public, the library has spaces to create, work together, experience, participate in workshops, and express talent through visual projects, applying different techniques such as photography, drawing, animation, illustration, graffiti, animation, and graphic design.

Children will be able to enjoy a beautiful room designed especially for them, with books and digital and other specialized content that will allow them to learn about and appreciate the land that their parents have created for them, and which will be theirs to protect.

Visit our special collections 

A collection focused on the Coffee Cultural Landscape:This collection, which will be continuously strengthened and augmented, includes significant publications for the heritage of the region in different formats. Among them are: the books and magazines edited by Cenicafé to disseminate the research of the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia; a collection of works and authors who presented a comprehensive literary overview of the Eje Cafetero; and books and archives on ornithology, ecology, and botany, among other topics. 

Digital Collection of Birds from the Central Andean Region of Colombia: This collection brings together photographs by Daniel Uribe and illustrations by William McMullan, with relevant information on some representative birds from the region. This collection comprises over 300 records, with close to 45 fields of description of each species including relevant data such as their scientific name, common name, geographical distribution, vocalization, and songs, among others. 

Collection on the Architectural Heritage of Manizales (1989-1993): This archive is made up of 471 architectural registers, 73 filmstrips, and 70 contact sheets with information from three of the most representative sectors of Manizales: the neighborhoods of Los Agustinos and San José, the historic center, and Versalles. Visitors can also explore geo-referenced visits of the city in the digital project Piel de bahareque.

Take note:

We open doors to the public on 17 June at 8:30 a.m. at Carrera 23 # 23-06. FREE ADMITTANCE

The opening lecture of the exhibition Decir el lugar: Testimonios del paisaje colombiano will take place on Saturday, June 17 at 10:00 a.m. It will be given by the Colombian artist Clemencia Echeverri, a native from Caldas, whose work was commissioned for this inauguration. Ms. Echeverri will present a critical reflection on the destructive practices of mining. 

In the framework of the International Image Festival of Manizales and the year Colombia-France in 2017, the renowned French artist Hicham Berrada will present his happening Presage at Banco de la República’s new Cultural Center on June 17 at 3:00 p.m. 

The Cultural Center seeks to be inclusive and is equipped with computers and intelligent Allreader machines for the visually impaired. Also, it has all the necessary infrastructure to ensure access and free movement to wheelchair users.

There will be a permanent program to encourage reflection on the environment and the challenges of its urgent preservation.