French Institute in Ljubljana Marks 40th Anniversary
The Charles Nodier French Institute in Ljubljana, the oldest foreign institution of its kind in Slovenia, has marked 40 years of its presence in Slovenia.
Addressing the ceremony late on Wednesday, French Ambassador to Slovenia Chantal de Bourmont and Mayor of Ljubljana Zoran Jankovic shared a view that the institute was proof of the good cooperation between Slovenia and France.
De Bourmont expressed her satisfaction that the institute is located in Ljubljana, the city which has had a lot in common with France ever since the time of Napoleon's Illirian Provinces. Ljubljana was the provinces' capital during of the French occupation between 1809 and 1813.
De Bourmont said that the foreign affairs ministries of France and former Yugoslavia founded the centre in 1966, while it came to life a year later.
For the next 30 years, the city of Ljubljana was hospitable enough to host the institute on its premises, until the institute moved to a building owned by the French Embassy in Ljubljana in 1997.
According to de Bourmont, this kind of cooperation and friendship between Slovenia and France will be important next year, when both countries preside over the EU.
Meanwhile, Mayor Jankovic hoped the institute would celebrate its centennial in the same building and wished for the two countries to continue to cooperate in such a good way.
The institute opened in 1967 under the name French Cultural Centre Charles Nodier. In 1996, it set up an educational section and transformed into institute a year later. The institute was named after the French author who worked in Ljubljana in 1812 and 1813 as the city librarian and the chief editor of "Telegraphe illyrien", the official newspaper of the Illirian Provinces. Interestingly, Ljubljana honoured the Illirian Provinces in 1929, when a monument to Napoleon Bonaparte was erected in the the city centre and is still there.
Apart from the French institute, the German Goethe Institute, the Italian Cultural Institute, the Spanish Cervantes Institute, the Austrian Institute and the British Council are located in Ljubljana.
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