The former house of the Praefectus (Scientific Director) of Padua’s botanical garden is currently home to our botanical museum. And this is where we will stop for a moment, because the museum houses a herbal of 700,000 plants, 100,000 algae, and 69,000 mushrooms … of course, all dried.

But there are also wax models of mushrooms, slides with algae called diatoms, photographic plates, wall panels and 16,346 test tubes containing seeds from all over the world. All dated late nineteenth or mid twentieth century.

The spezierìa or apothecary’s shop donated by Giuseppe Maggioni to the University of Padua dates back to the late eighteenth–early nineteenth century. Also on display are the volumes of the Botanical Garden Library and the Vincenzo Pinali Library, both on the upper floor of the building.

The museum thus narrates the history of botany and how this discipline gradually has become independent from the study of medicine, in Padua and elsewhere.