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, assembled starting from 1802, there are still numerous original herbarium specimens of illustrious Italian and foreign botanists, surviving the war events. Currently, the collections include about 90,000 specimens of vascular plants and 2,500 non-vascular cryptogams (lichens, algae, etc.).
There is a carpotheca/spermotheca with fruits and seeds from different parts of the world, a xylotheca, manuscripts, historical teaching plates, and botanical reproductions.
The Botanical Garden, founded by Domenico Viviani in 1803, was expanded to reach the current surface of one hectare in 1865 under the direction of Giuseppe De Notaris. It reached its greatest fame between the 19th and 20th centuries, when in 1892, thanks to the donation of Thomas Hanbury, the director Ottone Penzig inaugurated the new headquarters of the Botanical Institute, coinciding with the first International Congress of Botany in Italy.
Some specimens of cypresses, a Gleditsia, and a sequoia date back to the early years of the Garden, as well as 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 eras, housing rare ferns, tall tropical plants and aquatic species, collections of bromeliads and epiphytic orchids, succulents, and Cycadeae. The specimens present number around 4000 units, representing about 2000 taxa.
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