Rio celebrates the closing of World Book Capital and announces legacies for the city's culture and arts.

The title, awarded by UNESCO, recognized the city's relevance in formulating public policies to encourage reading - Iago Campos/Rio City Hall

The Rio de Janeiro City Hall held a ceremony this Tuesday (April 14th) at the Museum of Tomorrow to mark the closing of activities developed throughout the year in which Rio was the World Book Capital. The title, granted by UNESCO, recognized the city's relevance in formulating public policies to encourage reading and its fundamental importance in the world literary scene.

— Rio treated the title of World Book Capital not as a shelf trophy, but as an engine for public policies. Throughout this cycle, we strengthened the library network, expanded support for reading promotion projects, decentralized actions, took programming to different territories, supported community libraries, fairs, festivals, authors, publishers, bookstores, and new forms of literary mediation. But all of this, for me, points in the same direction: the institutionalization of reading as a long-term policy — highlighted Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere.

The event was attended by the Municipal Secretary of Culture, Lucas Padilha, the coordinator of the UNESCO World Book Capitals project in Paris, Paulo Guayasamim, and the UNESCO Culture Coordinator, Isabel de Paula.

"Rio's World Capital hasn't ended, it has no end. It continues wherever there is a reader, in literature and in the dream of building a city that considers its knowledge its greatest asset," said the Secretary of Culture, Lucas Padilha.

The event's main honoree was the writer Ana Maria Gonçalves, the first Black woman to join the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

On that occasion, the final activity report for the last 12 months was delivered. Five writers featured in the Rio de Escritores program represented the 70 authors recognized by this unprecedented support initiative, integrated into the Aldir Blanc National Policy (PNAB), promoted by the Federal Government, the Ministry of Culture, and the City Hall of Rio de Janeiro.

— By becoming the first World Book Capital for the Portuguese language, Rio de Janeiro contributes to the UNESCO program having an even greater impact on a global level. For over two decades, World Book Capitals have strengthened reading policies, expanding access to books in vulnerable territories, boosting the creative economy, and creating international cooperation networks. Each city contributes to a global movement that recognizes the book as an instrument for inclusion, diversity, and human development. And Rio de Janeiro, by completing its cycle, becomes part of this international network of cities committed to written culture. — said Isabel de Paula, UNESCO Culture Coordinator.

As a legacy of the period, members of civil society delivered a Municipal Reading Plan, with suggestions for public policies and initiatives to further expand reading in the municipality. On the same occasion, the Janela Bookstore was inaugurated, the first bookstore installed in a cultural facility in Rio.

Library of Knowledge

The main legacy of Rio de Janeiro as World Book Capital, the Library of Knowledge, had new details revealed at the event. Designed by Francis Kéré, winner of the Pritzker Prize, the facility will occupy more than 40 square meters and will become one of the city's main cultural landmarks in the coming decades.

The Library of Knowledge will not be just another cultural facility. It will not simply be a library in the conventional sense. It is born with a greater ambition.

She will be a symbol of the city we want to build: a city that recognizes that knowledge doesn't have a single form, that reading isn't confined to one medium, that the intelligence of a people also lives in orality, in memory, in experience, in art, in the territory, and in the cultural heritages that span generations — concluded the mayor.