You’re now standing in front of one of the most hidden treasures in Washington, the Oliveira Lima Library-sometimes known as the Ibero American Library. Imagine it’s 1916: the world is changing fast, but inside the beautiful walls of The Catholic University of America, Manoel de Oliveira Lima and his wife Flora are making a very important deal. Picture their excited whispers and the shuffling of crisp old pages as they hand over their private library, on the strict condition that it would stay a separate, special place-unlike any other!
When it opened in 1924, Manoel proudly became the first librarian-and you can almost see him here, mustache twitching as he carefully arranges 40,000 books focused on Portuguese Brazil. If you wondered if he ever took a day off, think again; this library was his life’s passion! After his death in 1928, his wife Flora took over and raised the collection to a whopping 58,000 books. Not to be outdone, she also added stacks of letters, rare art, and albums full of newspaper clippings from their travels around the globe-Lisbon, Berlin, even Tokyo! Talk about wanderlust!
Among the treasures here: original maps, a bronze bust of Brazil’s Emperor Pedro I, and the only color copy of Gaspar Barleus’s “Rerum per Octenium in Brasilia.” There’s even the first French book about Brazil, written by a friar with perhaps too much time on his hands! Don’t breathe in too hard; these rarities aren’t allowed to leave the library, not even for a little adventure. But thanks to a big digitizing project, you can peek into thousands of Portuguese and Brazilian books online.
So, this seemingly quiet underground corner is buzzing with stories almost too wild for fiction. Shall we keep the journey going?
