Canadian Semestered and co-educational, the school delivers an academically rigorous curriculum in a structured environment where all students live in residence. This learning and living at CCI unfolds in the birthplace of the Renaissance, where today’s knowledge-based civilization began. Students directly experience antiquity, the middle ages, the Renaissance and modern Europe, both formally, through regular organized trips with the school, and informally, through daily life in a modern town sensitively aware and conserving of its more than 3,000-year history.

Classroom and book learning, on which the school places the highest value, are enhanced dramatically when students are studying in the very places where the events being examined took place. Through the many supervised regular trips, which underline the importance of travel as an inherent part of CCI education, students walk in the same streets, fields and buildings as the pre-Etruscans, Pompeiians and Romans, emperors and popes, Raphael and Michelangelo.

The school is located in Lanciano, an ancient-yet-modern, well-serviced city of 40,000 in eastern Abruzzo, beautifully situated between the ocean and the Apennine Mountains and providing students a friendly, safe and charming environment in which to live and learn. About 15 minutes’ drive to the sand or stone beaches of the Adriatic Sea, and less than three hours’ drive from Rome, Lanciano has excellent train and bus service to all of Italy and Europe.

Lanciano has carefully preserved many artifacts, fossils and architectural elements from all eras of its long history. Called “Anxanum” in Roman times, it became a centre for trading and fairs in the medieval and Renaissance eras, then fell into the isolation typical of Abruzzo and other rural regions before later playing its part in the Risorgimento (“resurgence”), Italy’s 19th-century unification under Garibaldi and Cavour), and the two world wars of the 20th century.

With a friendly, heritage-conscious citizenry and council, and recent government-aided development of industry and tourism throughout the local area to supplement its basic vegetable, olive and wine economy, Lanciano is one of modern Italy’s most pleasant and comfortable places to live in.

CCI students follow a challenging, university-focused academic curriculum which includes mathematics, computers, classical civilization, chemistry, physics, biology, social science, English, art and drama. All courses are taught in English, except for international languages.

The school offers high school grades 10 through graduation, as well as Advanced Placement (University/College preparatory) courses. Students may enroll for a single semester or for up to three academic years (two semesters per year). Courses conform to the accreditation guidelines of the Ontario Ministry of Education, and credits may be applied toward a high school diploma at institutions throughout North America and abroad. The school also offers summer academic credits on campus during the month of July. CCI is inspected by the province of Ontario, Canada, whose requirements parallel or exceed most other North American jurisdictions, and is a member of ECIS, the European Council of International Schools.

CCI selects its professional teaching staff, all of whom possess the required teacher’s qualifications, for their commitment, interest and previous training in their subject areas. Staff are also chosen for strong teaching capability, devotion to students’ needs and interests both in and outside of school hours, and a willingness to assist and lead the extracurricular life of the school.

Since CCI began, student response to this professional interest and personal dedication has been very evident, often rewardingly expressed in sustained, and occasionally completely reborn student commitment to studies and academic excellence. The overall teacher-to-student ratio of one-to-twelve ensures that extensive individual attention is available for every student.

CCI places high importance on carefully counselling students in the preparation of their applications to universities and colleges to ensure the institutions are appropriate to the student’s ambitions, academic potential and personal characteristics. With a strong background knowledge of international universities, CCI’s guidance department devotes whatever hours necessary to carefully analyzing and explaining to each graduating student the programs and nature of the universities/ colleges recommended for consideration.

CCI’s main building is a four-storey medieval structure centred around a bright, covered atrium that rises the full four storeys. With modern bathrooms, plumbing, electric and lighting systems, CCI houses three floors of computer-lab, library, classrooms and offices around the central atrium, with the archives of the Lanciano community occupying the other floor.

To accommodate up to 120 students, CCI maintains multilevel residences. Each residence customarily develops a “mini-family” (sometimes more than one) inside the school community. The family atmosphere is encouraged and fostered as important in making each residence a home-away-from-home as much as possible.

The residences also create, in effect, a “house” system, similar to that of independent schools in Europe and America. Whatever the family feeling and house loyalties, the residence management and operations are rigorously professional. During after-school hours, each residence is overseen by senior and accessible live-in dons who are employed specifically to manage residences, or by teachers with residence responsibilities as well as their course work. Strict though the residence rules are, and difficult as the adjustment to living with someone else may seem at first, it is invariably the residence experience, with its friendships, necessary accommodations, agreements, understandings and overall bonding, that students report they remember and continue to treasure as an enriching part of their CCI lives.

For meals, the school maintains the “Allegria,” an inn where students eat in dining rooms that accommodate up to 200 people. CCI students enjoy an excellent Mediterranean diet featuring much pasta, vegetables, salads and olive oil. The Allegria also has recreation rooms where students can relax, play, and present drama and comedy skits. There is also a coffee bar centred around a large, corner fireplace. At onetime a hotel, the Allegria has eight bedrooms that are let to visiting parents or guests of the school, who are also welcome to dine with the students.

CCI’s mission is to inspire its students – through rigorous teaching and sensitive, collegial mentoring – to actualize their highest intellectual and moral potential and become fully prepared for effective university study and responsible adult life, while living communally at the historic centre of modern civilization. A tall order, but one which CCI fulfills admirably.