The Banco de la República Cultural Center in Honda is a space designed for culture and the arts. Its views of the rivers make it an especially pleasant place to enjoy reading and access to knowledge. In addition to being a regional epicenter for sharing culture and encouraging reading, the Cultural Center seeks to contribute to recovering the material and immaterial historical heritage of the department of Tolima that has been fundamental to many of the country's historical events. Besides providing access to Banco de la República’s Library Network catalogue, the Cultural Center has an important bibliographic collection and provides continuous, convenient access to information.
The Cultural Center’s reading room, children's room, and literature room are set up for all types of audiences. Users can find reference material, access the music collection, watch educational videos and documentaries, and examine national and regional newspapers and magazines. The center’s cultural and artistic activities are made available to residents across the region: exhibitions, concerts, conferences, and workshops, among others. Visitors to the center are also able to enjoy terraces and balconies that allow them to appreciate the landscape of the Gualí and Honda rivers.
History
After the words of the then-general manager of Banco de la República, Miguel Urrutia Montoya, on May 21, 1998, the Cultural Center was inaugurated in the city of Honda. On this date, the library's doors were opened to the public for it to enjoy a series of collections carefully chosen to meet the interests of students, professionals, and general public, in addition to allowing access to the entire catalogue of Banco de la República’s Library Network. That same year, the children's room and the music and video collections were opened, which have contributed to the cultural development of the region and the safeguarding of publications produced in and about the Tolima region.
Since then, the Banco de la República Cultural Center in Honda has been known for its library designed to match the interests of the city's population and its cultural landscape. In the words of Mr. Miguel Urrutia: "In this library, readers will be able to have the experience of that Honda native, Alfonso López Pumarejo, who said that here, in ‘that commercial emporium with a secular tradition, my eyes were opened in amazement to the immense reality of our mulatto, mestizo, and tropical homeland, contemplated from that observatory at the confluence of the Magdalena and Gualí rivers, where merchants from the four corners of the country came to stock up.’”
