The opening of the first ice core archive in Antarctica signifies a historic milestone for the Ice Memory project, initiated in 2015 by the National Research Council and the University of Ca' Foscari, Venice, in collaboration with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, IRD, Université Grenoble-Alpes (France), and the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland). Following a journey of over 50 days aboard the icebreaker Laura Bassi, which departed from Trieste, two valuable ice samples from retreating Alpine glaciers—collected with the assistance of the Ice Memory Foundation—arrived at the Italian-French Concordia Station, in the heart of the Antarctic plateau. Conducted within the framework of Italy’s National Antarctic Research Program (PNRA), the transport was managed by the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (OGS). Once they arrived at their destination, the ice cores were kept in the Ice Memory Sanctuary, a cave excavated into the ice that was specifically built to serve as a natural and permanent storage for ice samples. This achievement, in light of UNESCO's Decade of Action for Cryosphere Sciences, reveals the complete efficacy of the efforts made to protect our planet's glacial climate archives. The two Alpine ice cores were taken from Mont Blanc (Col du Dome, France, 2016) and the Grand Combin (Switzerland, 2025). The Ice Memory Sanctuary, operational since yesterday, is a cave measuring 35 meters in length and 5 meters high and wide. It has been excavated wholly within layers of compacted snow approximately 5 meters beneath the surface, reaching a total depth of 9 meters. Dozens of other Ice Memory cores from around the world—the Andes, the Pamirs, and the Caucasus—will join these first two in their new "refuge" in the coming years.