In­ter­na­tion­al Coun­cil on Mon­u­ments and Sites (ICO­MOS) T&T, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion, is cel­e­brat­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Mon­u­ments and Sites with a se­ries of ar­ti­cles fea­tur­ing her­itage build­ings in the T&T Guardian.To­day is the sixth in­stal­ment in the se­ries and fea­tures the Roy­al Vic­to­ria In­sti­tute.The theme for the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Mon­u­ments and Sites is the Her­itage of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Through­out his­to­ry and in dif­fer­ent geo-cul­tur­al con­texts, ed­u­ca­tion was prac­tised in a wide range of places or build­ings.ICO­MOS T&T seeks to raise pub­lic aware­ness of the full di­ver­si­ty of cul­tur­al her­itage places and land­scapes of na­tion­al or lo­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

ROY­AL VIC­TO­RIA IN­STI­TUTE

The Roy­al Vic­to­ria In­sti­tute was built as a Sci­ence and Art Mu­se­um to com­mem­o­rate the Di­a­mond Ju­bilee of Queen Vic­to­ria and was orig­i­nal­ly called the Vic­to­ria In­sti­tute. Pre­dom­i­nate­ly de­signed in the Ger­man Re­nais­sance style, the ar­chi­tect was DM Hahn. The build­ing was opened on Sep­tem­ber 17, 1902, by MS De­venish in ab­sence of the Gov­er­nor.

Mi­cro­scop­ic ex­hibits were seen by the pub­lic for the first time in Trinidad on this oc­ca­sion. Soon af­ter, the mu­se­um be­gan to re­ceive var­i­ous gifts, one of which as an an­chor be­lieved to be from one of Christo­pher Colum­bus' ships and lost off Ica­cos on his voy­age to Trinidad. It was pre­sent­ed to the na­tion by Fran­cois Agos­ti­ni, own­er of Con­stance Es­tate on March 9, 1912.

The an­chor was un­cov­ered from a re­claimed site in 1877 in a lo­ca­tion which cor­re­sponds to records of where Colum­bus lost an an­chor at sea on Au­gust 2, 1498.On May 19, 1920, the in­te­ri­or of the build­ing was de­stroyed by fire. On­ly the ex­ter­nal walls re­mained and most of the col­lec­tions were lost. The main por­tion of the build­ing was re­built us­ing the same plan as the old build­ing. It was re­opened in June 1923 and was used for the­atri­cal and mu­si­cal en­ter­tain­ment and com­mer­cial class­es.

By 1958 the build­ing as­sumed re­gion­al im­por­tance as the site of the first sit­ting of the Fed­er­al Court of the Fed­er­a­tion of the West In­dies. The Court met in the King Ed­ward VI­II Memo­r­i­al Wing.Af­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go's In­de­pen­dence in 1962, mu­se­um de­vel­op­ment seemed to have been giv­en low pri­or­i­ty. Both the col­lec­tion and the build­ing de­te­ri­o­rat­ed to a point where the mu­se­um was forced to close its doors to the pub­lic in 1980.

The Na­tion­al Mu­se­um of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as it serves the pub­lic in­ter­est, re­lates to the his­toric, artis­tic, in­tel­lec­tu­al, eco­nom­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, le­gal, so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ments. The na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty looks to the mu­se­um for ex­pe­ri­ences of the col­lec­tive cul­tur­al fab­ric of the past and the present.

�2 For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the day, pre­vi­ous themes, sup­port ma­te­r­i­al and the cal­en­dar of ac­tiv­i­ties around the world, go to the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Mon­u­ments and Sites page of the ICO­MOS In­ter­na­tion­al­Web site.