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, arranged since 1802, there are still numerous original herbarium specimens of distinguished Italian and foreign botanists, surviving the war events. Currently, the collections include about 90,000 vascular plant specimens and 2,500 non-vascular cryptogams (lichens, algae, etc.).
There is a carpotheca/spermatheca with fruits and seeds from various parts of the world, a xylotheque, manuscripts, historical teaching tables, and botanical reproductions.
The Botanical Garden, founded by Domenico Viviani in 1803, was expanded to reach the current surface area of one hectare in 1865 under the direction of Giuseppe De Notaris. It reached its highest prominence 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.
Dating back to the early years of the Garden are some cypress specimens, a Gleditsia, and a sequoia, as well as magnificent specimens of large ferns such as Cibotium regale and Angiopteris evecta. After the destruction 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.) of different periods, with rare ferns, tall tropical and aquatic plants, collections of bromeliads and epiphytic orchids, succulents, and Cycadeae. The specimens present number around 4000 units, representing about 2000 taxa.
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