Imola Center for Documentation on Anti-Fascist Resistance and Contemporary History

The Imola Center for Documentation on Anti-Fascist Resistance and Contemporary History is a voluntary cultural association established in 1983; recognized and adherent to the National Institute of Resistance and Liberation Struggle in Italy (Insmli) since 1988. It promotes and carries out studies and research on history from the Unification of Italy to today; collects materials, relics, documents and keeps them organically. It organizes historical dissemination initiatives such as conferences, seminars, book presentations in the Imola area; it works in particular towards schools of all types and levels. Inside the Center there are: the permanent exhibition of the museum for the history of the Resistance and the twentieth century, an archive-photo library, a library-newspaper library and a collection of audiovisuals. The Center provides consultancy for research and publications, organizes guided visits to the permanent exhibition for schools and conversations with witnesses of the Second World War and the Resistance. It also proposes and collaborates in the presentation of exhibitions and provides teachers with advice for educational activities and tools (didactic notebooks to carry out history workshops), collaborates in the initiatives promoted by the Municipality on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance and the Day of remembrance and those related to the 25 April.

It can be said that the existence and strength of this historical institute are mainly due to Elio Gollini. Already during the Resistance Gollini had preserved precious originals of the clandestine press produced and / or distributed in the Imola area from 1943 to 1945, documents concerning political and military decisions, the correspondence between Imola and Bologna of the PCI, relations with the partisan brigades, with the CUMER (Single Military Command Emilia-Romagna), the women’s defense groups, the trade union movements. It is a work that is not taken for granted, which very few in Italy have done, especially with the love and precision of Gollini: all this constituted the basis for the collection of that first nucleus of documents and materials that allowed the start of the ‘Institute. It was 1983 and it was the fortieth anniversary of the Resistance; the C.I.D.R.A. was born at the same time with the awarding of the Gold Medal for Military Valor for the contribution made by the city of Imola to the struggle for Liberation. The then mayor Bruno Solaroli identified Casa Gandolfi in via dei Mille as the seat of the new Institute, the permanent exhibition museum and the Combat Associations (ANPPIA, ANPI, ANED). Elio Gollini was President of the C.I.D.R.A. until 1 February 2010, when the baton passed to Professor Roberto Fabio Baroni. In 2014 the center changed its location and moved to the former Annunziata complex in via F.lli Bandiera, 23. L. 124-2017
In 1987 the Archival Superintendency for Emilia-Romagna declared the Cidra documentary collections of considerable historical interest.

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