Isabelle Gatti de Gamond Royal Atheneum
# Isabelle Gatti de Gamond Royal Atheneum

The Isabelle Gatti de Gamond Royal Atheneum (French: Athénée royal Isabelle Gatti de Gamond) is a French-speaking K-12 school located in Brussels, Belgium. When founded in 1864 by Isabelle Gatti de Gamond, the school was the first non-confessional school for girls in Belgium.

## History

Established on October 3, 1864, under the name Cours supérieur d'éducation pour jeunes filles, the school is the oldest state middle and high school for girls in Belgium.

The school extended its curriculum throughout the second half of the 19th century with the creation of a kindergarten (1879), a department of pedagogy providing educational training to future female schoolteachers (1880) and a university preparatory department (1894). It was named Lycée royal Gatti de Gamond in 1948 and adopted its current name with the implementation of mixed-sex education in 1976.

Since the closure of the Athénée royal de Bruxelles (fr) in 2002, the school has been the only state atheneum in the Communauté française network located within the limits of the Brussels historical city center.

## Education

The school from the ‘Enseignement officiel de la Communauté française de Belgique’ state schools network offers general and vocational education and is located on two campuses:

* Primary School (pre-k – grade 7) : 9 rue du Canon - Brussels 1000
* Secondary school (grades 7-12) : 65 rue du Marais – Brussels 1000

## Alumni

### Former principals

Isabelle Gatti de Gamond (1864-1899), Cornélie Nourry (1899-1902), Lilla Monod (1902-1919), Germaine Collaer-Feytmans (1919-1926), Juliette Orban (1926), Juliette Daco-Wéry (1926-1944), Angèle Ramoisy (1944-1958), Hélène Andries-Leva (1958-1977), Betty Wéry-Hofman (1977-1978), René Pira (1978), Rose Delmez (1978-1979), Olga Bosschaert (1978-1980), Pierre Willemart (1980-1989), Andrée Depauw (1990), Jean-Pierre Goman (1990), Bernadette Genotte (1991-2004), Nicole Antoine (2004-2009); Hugues Thiry (2009-2010); André Charneux (2010-2013), Bertrand Wilquet (2014), Pascal Hallemans (2015-2017) and Bertrand Wilquet (since 2017).

### Former teachers

* Henriette Dachsbeck, feminist.
* Andrée Geulen, 'Righteous Among the Nations'.
* Odile Henri (1892-1945) : former teacher and head of the boarding section, she was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after having hidden Jewish children at the school boarding section.
* Anne Morelli, historian, professor at Université libre de Bruxelles
* Louise Popelin (1850-1937) : one of the three first female university students in Belgium (1880).
* Marie Popelin : first Belgian woman to receive a doctorate in law.

### Former students

* Alain Berliner, film director
* Georgette Ciselet, Belgian senator
* Marie Closset, poet
* Martine Cornil, journalist
* Farid El Asri, anthropologist, professor at Université catholique de Louvain
* Alexis Goslain, actor, singer
* Marie Janson, first female Belgian senator
* Marthe de Kerchove de Denterghem, feminist, politician
* Helena Lemkovitch
* Lio, singer and actress
* Michel Ngonge, football player
* Blanche Rousseau (1875-1949), author
* Nathalie Uffner, actress and author
* Marguerite Van de Wiele, author
* Gabrielle Warnant, feminist, politician
* Mourade Zeguendi, actor
