Chances are, you’re probably not visiting Rome, Madrid, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, Tehran, Addis Ababa, and Washington DC all this year. No worries. We live in a capital city where cultural centres from all over the world are present. With free film screenings, language courses, theatre programmes, art exhibitions, libraries, and cuisines on offer, you really don’t need to travel too far to experience a new country.
The Delhi Culture Vulture | 13 International Centres in Delhi
Instituto de Cervantes
While the name might make you think of Spain, The Instituto Cervantes offers a wide variety of cultural programmes with the objective of building bridges between all Spanish-speaking countries and India. The Zenobia-Juan Ramón Jiménez Library is integrated within the Library Network of Instituto Cervantes, the largest network of Spanish libraries in the world. Their cultural programmes range from presentations on the arts, music, gastronomy, history, conferences, exhibitions, concerts, film screenings, workshops, and scholarly reasearch. The Instituto de Cervantes also boasts a calm and serene ambience amidst chaos of Connaught Place.
Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre
ith a long shared history between Hungary and India, it makes sense that they organise over 150 programmes annually. Their reference library has a collection of 3,000 books, 150 CDs and a large number of periodicals that give a good cross-section of the cultural, political and scientific life of Hungary. There are also the informative, monthly lectures of Petofi Book Club, closely associated with the Library activities.
The American Center
The American Center is the Embassy’s cultural center, offering art exhibits, book launches, discussions, lectures, seminars, and film festivals. It houses the American Library, a specialised reference and research facility, for access to comprehensive and authoritative nformation on the United States, its people and its policies.
Alliance Francaise
While the Alliance Francaise in Lodhi hosts many events, {including theatre performances, lectures, and film screenings} we thought we’d let you know that they have a location in Gurgaon too. The Gurgaon centre has a fully equipped multimedia library with a collection of documents across different subjects including literature, language, social sciences, arts, comics, children’s books as well as a wide range of French magazines and journals.
Ethiopian Cultural Centre
Not only does this center include a conference hall, meeting hall, and a permanent display of traditional Ethiopian artifacts and paintings, they’ve also got a restaurant, and a coffeehouse. Sign up for membership and you can enjoy some Ethiopian coffee, Injera bread, and Doro Wat!
Japan Foundation
While the Japan Foundation has its own film club, language classes, talks, and exhibitions, they’ve got an impressive library too. Notably, membership to their library gets you not only Japanese books, CDs, and DVDs, but also manga comics.
Korean Cultural Centre
The Korean Cultural Centre deserves special mention since some of their coolest offerings {aside from their art exhibitions, theatre performances, library, language courses, and film screenings} are their own Taekwondo Academy, a Korean Cafe, and two serene gardens. Go on, sign up for membership to the centre and go for that black belt.
Iran Culture House
The Iran Culture House, New Delhi includes an extensive Persian language and calligraphy programme for beginners as well as for advanced level students. And for all you poets and Rumi lovers out there, The Culture House of the Islamic Republic of Iran organises a fortnightly poetry recitation and discussion programme in order to enable the students and scholars to speak the Persian language fluently.
Italian Cultural Centre
With membership to the Italian Cultural Centre, you receive invitations to all the cultural activities organized by the centre, access to all the Italian reading room’s services {DVD player, internet, newspapers and magazines}, and the freedom to borrow books from the library. Oh and did we mention you get access their restaurant too.
For more information, click here
Goethe Institut– Max Mueller Bhavan
The Goethe-Institut New Delhi is the best-known centre in the city for German courses and internationally recognised examinations. In addition to general language courses covering all levels for adults and teens, the offer includes a wide range of customised corporate courses. The language courses are supplemented by an extensive examination programme. Make sure to also check out their online library catalogue as well as online DVD and video catalogue.
For more information, click here
Pro Helvetia
owered by the Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia is no stranger to Delhi’s contemporary art scene. The Pro Helvetia promotes the dissemination of culture and art from Switzerland and highlights the diversity of the Swiss cultural scene. For all you artists and culture fanatics, make sure to check out their studio and research residiency programmes.
For more information, click here
Polish Institute
The Polish Institute develops events and cultural programming in the genres of the visual arts, film, theatre, music, literature and science. Past collaborations have included introducing a selection of Polish books in Hindi with the National Book Trust at the New Delhi World Book Fair 2014.
Russian Centre of Science and Culture
The Russia Centre of Science and Culture is one of the few international centres that offers a great variety of science programmes. More recently, they partnered with IIT for an event to celebrate the birthday of Dimitri Mendeleev, the father of chemistry.
For more information, click here
