Since 1941, the INDIRE headquarters have been housed in the Gerini palace, in Florence. The historical heritage is preserved in the building, which is also the headquarters of the General Management, the Presidency, and the Board of Directors of the institute, as well as housing the administrative and financial offices.

History

The National Institute of Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research (Indire) was founded in 1925 in Florence as a national educational exhibition on the products of “new” schools, those that implemented Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s idea of teaching as an “active” experience. In 1929, to give a permanent home to the Exhibition, the National Educational Museum was established which in 1941 became the National Educational Centre (CDN), in 1953 the National Educational Centre for Studies and Documentation (CDNSD) and in 1974 the Pedagogical Documentation Library (BDP). During the 1980s, the Library was the protagonist of a pioneering use of digital technologies that revolutionized the very idea of educational documentation, making it an innovative engine for the dissemination of knowledge.

The institution has always maintained the same headquarters: since 1925 it has been located in the centre of Florence, in the Santa Croce district, inside the Renaissance-style Gerini Palace refurbished between 1937 and 1941 by the architect Giovanni Michelucci who also designed the interior furnishing.

«The Schools Museum presented a series of rooms, each of which was dedicated to a subject concerning a teaching field or a type of school and for which different furniture had been built, designed to accommodate materials of various types. Except for rare cases, they were all very functional both from the point of view of the external structures (there are no sharp edges, the handles are rounded, the chairs are linear and very comfortable) and from the point of view of the use of the internal parts. […]

The furnishing of the Schools Museum, wanted by the Regime to enhance the progress made in the field of education, had finally made it possible to put into practice everything Michelucci wanted to realise in the field of furniture, without succeeding, until then, due to lack of means».

 

View the virtual exhibitions

• Gerini Palace. The documentation and history of the Indire headquarters (1941-2019)
• Indire and the flood of 1966. From the historical archive, the photographs and drawings of the students of the time
• National Schools Museum 1941