Il Botanical Museum is located inside the building constructed with the contribution of Thomas Hanbury in 1862 in Genoa; the Botanical Garden extends for about one hectare around the building itself.
In the Museum’s collections, set up from 1802, there are still many original herbarium specimens from illustrious Italian and foreign botanists, survived the war events. Currently, the collections include about 90,000 samples of vascular plants and 2,500 of non-vascular cryptogams (lichens, algae, etc.).
There is a carpotheca/spermotheca with fruits and seeds from different parts of the world, a xylotheque, manuscripts, historical educational boards, and botanical reproductions.
The Botanical Garden, founded by Domenico Viviani in 1803, was expanded until reaching the current surface of one hectare in 1865 under the direction of Giuseppe De Notaris. It reached maximum notoriety between the 19th and 20th centuries, when in 1892, thanks to the donation of Thomas Hanbury, director Ottone Penzig inaugurated the new headquarters of the Botanical Institute, coinciding with the first International Botanical Congress in Italy.
Some specimens of cypress, a Gleditsia, and a sequoia date back to the early years of the Garden, in addition to magnificent specimens of large ferns such as Cibotium regale and Angiopteris evecta. After the destructions of the Second World War, Rodolfo Pichi Sermolli, between 1958 and 1972, completed the reconstruction with a small greenhouse for succulents and a new large greenhouse.
Currently, the Garden, divided into six outdoor levels, also has six greenhouses (1000 sq.m.) from different periods, with rare ferns, tall tropical plants and aquatic plants, collections of bromeliads and epiphytic orchids, succulents, and Cycadeae. The specimens present are around 4000 units, representing about 2000 taxa.
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