This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)

This botanic garden is in Pegli and part of villa Durazzo-Pallavicini, famous for its impressive romantic park of melodramatic inspiration, designed by the Michele Canzio – the acclaimed scenographer of the Carlo Felice Theater in Genoa.

Clelia Durazzo, of noble origins and wife of Giuseppe Grimaldi, wanted this place built in 1794, then made it extremely famous thanks to more than 1.700 taxa in its collections.
In 1840, her nephew Alessandro Pallavicini started building the romantic park and remodelled the very botanical garden. Namely, he had the two greenhouses restructured – an important effort which was going to be undertaken again by the family of Teresa Durazzo Grimaldi.

The romantic landscape park, located in the upper portion, is traversed by a scenographic path which features a classic avenue ending in a triumphal arch, the “Casa dell’Eremita” (“Hermit’s abode”), a Chinese pagoda, and a rose gazebo.

In 1928, the botanical garden was donated to the local Municipality and it gradually became a nursery for the production of plants and flowers used by the city of Genoa.

PLANTS
Often neglected in the past, this garden has been eventually restored to its original splendour by the city of Genoa.
It includes many different succulent plants – including the thorny golden barrel cactus (Echinocactus grusonii) and a Welwitschia mirabilis from Africa – one of the oldest known species, with ribbon-like leaves and a stocky and tuberous stem. There are also some 200 species of orchids and some carnivorous plants like the Drosera rotundifolia – with spoon-like leaves. Not to mention the palm collection, featuring some 80 species.

The vegetable garden, an instructional one, includes two monumental greenhouses of the nineteenth-century (but rebuilt in 1901) which have been recently renovated with state-of-the-art technology. These greenhouses are a true icon of the typical Genoese architecture, as well as the product of the botanical culture of the nineteenth century: built in tiers, with slate shelves that host a large number of vases, they allow the cultivation of outdoor and indoor plants.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)