Botanical Museum of the University of Padua

On 13 February the Botanical Museum of the University of Padua was inaugurated in Padua. Located in what once was the house of the prefect of the Botanical Gardens, the exhibition is spread out over an area of ​​500 square meters and makes accessible to the public a significant part of the museum heritage for the first time, including botanical collections dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Visitors are welcomed by the oldest preserved trunk, that of the chaste tree, followed by a gallery of herbaria which includes 136 specimens, the historical herbarium with about 800,000 specimens of dried plants, algae, mushrooms and lichens and a series of ancient volumes of the new “Vincenzo Pinali and Giovanni Marsili” library which includes various sixteenth-century works. The itinerary continues with the apothecary, a real late eighteenth-century pharmacy with original furnishings and equipment, and a room dedicated to botany lessons which displays nine late nineteenth-century teaching tables and wax and clay models of mushrooms. The layout is also enriched by five interactive digital installations distributed in the various rooms, which allow the visitor to delve into the history of the Botanical Garden, through three centuries of pharmaceutical and medical history.

Our team is proud of the set-up created, capable of involving the visitor and enhancing the history of the UNESCO site, which thus becomes a place where research, teaching and dissemination coexist and meet.

Photo Courtesy: University of Padua