First Montessori School

In January 1907, the Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori opened the first Casa dei Bambini, or "Children's House," in a working-class apartment block in the San Lorenzo district of Rome. Though modest in scale, it became the testing ground for an approach to early education that now shapes thousands of schools around the world. Its central idea, that young children learn best through self-directed activity in a carefully prepared environment, challenged the rigid, teacher-centered classrooms common at the time.

Montessori was one of the first women to qualify as a doctor in Italy. Early in her career she worked with children labeled "deficient" at the University of Rome's psychiatric clinic, where she drew on the earlier work of French physicians Jean Itard and Édouard Séguin. She came to believe that the materials and methods that helped these children could benefit all young learners. The opportunity to test this came when a housing association, which was renovating tenements in San Lorenzo, asked her to supervise a day program for the children of working parents, who would otherwise be left unattended.

In the Casa dei Bambini, Montessori observed the children closely and adjusted the setting to what she saw. She provided child-sized furniture, low shelves, and hands-on materials designed for specific skills, such as graded cylinders, lettered cutouts, and beads for counting. Children chose their own tasks and worked at their own pace, often for long periods of concentration. The teacher acted more as a guide and observer than a lecturer. Montessori later reported that the children seemed calmer and more focused than expected, and that many learned to read and write at remarkably young ages, though these early accounts came largely from her and her supporters.

Interest spread quickly. Visitors arrived from across Europe and the United States, and Montessori's book on her method appeared in 1909 and was soon translated into many languages. Schools opened internationally, and she spent much of her later life lecturing and training teachers, including during years of exile from Fascist Italy, which had initially supported her work and then turned against it. She later lived and worked in Spain, the Netherlands, and India.

The Montessori movement has had lasting influence, but it has also drawn debate. Because the name was never trademarked in a way that controlled its use, quality and fidelity to her principles vary widely among schools. Researchers have studied its outcomes with mixed but often positive findings. Its broader legacy is clear: ideas such as child-sized classrooms, hands-on learning, and respect for a child's independence, which Montessori championed in a small Roman apartment, are now widely familiar in early childhood education.