The Children's City and the De Amicis Library

The Children's City

The “Children's City ” in Genoa is the first big "Science Centre” completely devoted to childhood.

The city is divided into two very differentiated areas: the first one is dedicated to the youngest aged 3 to 5 years, while the other one is for children aged 6 to 14. People visit it in order to increase their capabilities to Iearn and to relate to the others.

3-to-5-years Area

• The Building Site: it’s a proper yard on a child scale with a crane, buckets, wheelbarrows, and foam rubber bricks. Children give their own contribution to  completing the construction of the house.

• The Basin of Manipulation: it’s a big water basin provided with mills, miniature dams, buckets; small boats, and every sort of containers. Children can Iearn how to come into contact with water.

• The First Discoveries: it includes concave and convex mirrors, video cameras, a machine to reproduce wind, hoses for reproduce smells and sounds. The child can experience his own senses.

6-to-14-years Area

• The Living Creature: a real ant-farm is presented here. Children have the opportunity to watch closely, also through an underpass, lenses and microscopes, how these insects live.

• The Clayey Rock: it includes two different tanks containing specimens of testudo.

• The Isle of the Five Senses: it’s the reconstruction of a treasure island where children have the chance to take part in a real treasure hunt with five enigmas they have to solve with the help of their five senses.

• The TV Studio: a real-life TV Studio where children can be newsreaders, cameramen, directors, or stage designers and where they are able to carry out a real television news just like “grown-ups”!

• The Identity Card: through the consultation of a form, children create their very own identity card, by recognising their genetic features.

• Wonders: specially shaped mirrors, lights and computers that let children experience the laws of physics live.

• @peiron multimedial space: it’s dedicated to the world of the Internet and of TV. Visitors can surf the net and find out everything related to television.

• Stokke Area: it’s a place for children who want to look like adults and for adults who want to look like children.
• The Transatlantic Liner: created in 2004, here children can play with rudders and communicate with different parts of the ship. Once “on earth”, they meet two different settings: an Eskimo igloo and an Indian tent.

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De Amicis Library 

The De Amicis Library is a documentation centre, created in 1962, whose principal function is gathering, comparing and selecting all that relates to Italian and foreign children’s literature, and to arrange congresses and meetings about books for kids. It also encourages the diffusion and the promotion of this kind of literature.

The De Amicis Library was inaugurated on May 18th, 1971. As one of the first specialized libraires in Italy, it forms integral part of the network of the Municipality's Urban Library System.

On June 22nd, 1999, the De Amicis Library inaugurated its new buildings in the Cotton Warehouses in the heart of the Old Port. In its 2000 square metres, it offers 180 reading seats, 30 listening-posts for CD-Rom and music, an auditorium for conferences, an informal space for children aged from O to 6. The Library also offers a patrimony of over 40.000 works ranged according to age-groups. It also provides books in foreign languages, as well as rare works dating from the XIX and the XX century. A wide range of services is offered, like the loan, the consultation of books, magazines and reviews through a computerized catalogue, meetings with authors and illustrators, seminars for teachers and students, bibliographical exhibitions, and shows. All the activities are in partnership with the genoese families, schools and associations.

Already more than 300.000 people visited the Library. Last year, the structure offered 250 laboratories and more than 300 guided tours. Every year, the library takes part in the International Book Fair in Bologna, providing a lively stand. It also arranges a film festival for young people, “Filmbusters” with the co-operation of the Zelig Association.

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