The Banco de la República Cultural Center in Girardot, located on a busy corner in the city center, is a space for research, reading, group work, and constant encounters between users and visual arts and music. Its facilities offer an extensive bibliographic collection, which includes access to Banco de la República’s Library Network catalogue and the Regional Documentation Center’s collection, which has an important photographic collection focused on historical and cultural aspects of the region. Located in a commercial and tourist area of the city near Bolivar Park, the Banco de la República Cultural Center in Girardot is positioned as the cultural epicenter of the city, providing the Girardot community with a broad cultural program defined by the library’s services and collections, spaces for group work, sections for visual arts and music, and all the services and technical capacities of Banco de la República’s cultural network.
History
The Banco de la República has been operating in Girardot since November 1928, in response to growing commercial development at this port city on the Magdalena River. In the year 1962, Banco de la República’s executive committee decided to elevate the agency in Girardot to a branch office in recognition of the importance the city had acquired as a commercial, agricultural, and ranching center. The branch, located on Camellón del Comercio, operated for almost 20 years until 1981, when a new space was inaugurated downtown on the corner of Carrera 12 and Calle 17. This change opened the doors to the creation of the central bank's Cultural Center, which from that date began to have a public library and a cultural program in music, visual arts, traveling exhibitions from the Gold Museum, and activities to encourage reading, contributing significantly to the cultural development of the community of Girardot. In 1999, the Cultural Center was remodeled to allow for more activities. Wide, bright spaces with new rooms were inaugurated. At present, the Cultural Center has a library, a children's room, a Regional Documentation Collection, a group study room, an exhibition room, a multipurpose room, and a customer service office.
