Festival della Biodiversità

The Festival della biodiversità (Biodiversity Festival) promoted by the University of Palermo and the CNR, in collaboration with the Le Vie dei Tesori Foundation to promote science, research and nature, has planned visits and experiences that will transform the city of Palermo into a widespread museum for a month.

The activities will be dedicated to Empedocles' four elements – water, air, earth and fire – and will involve over thirty academics, scholars and experts, with the aim of celebrating biodiversity together with visitors: this does not only mean the beauty of nature, but also the coexistence of different animal and plant species in the same ecosystem, creating a balance thanks to their mutual relationships.

The Festival will kick off on Saturday 8 November and end on 11 December, with the opening of a museum and scientific centre on biodiversity in Via Archirafi, the Biodiversity Gateway: a permanent structure, the main one in Italy together with the one in Venice, dedicated to the study and promotion of biodiversity as part of a major project funded by the Pnrr, the National Biodiversity Future Centre (NFBC), which involves two thousand researchers.

Ten biodiversity sites will be featured in the Festival, forming a widespread map of biodiversity, with the Botanical Garden of the University of Palermo at its centre.

The Botanical Garden's Seed Bank, the beating heart of its conservation mission, opens its doors to the public for the first time during the Festival. This authentic treasure trove of biodiversity, where seeds are meticulously collected, catalogued and preserved, is finally revealed to visitors thanks to Director Prof. Rosario Schicchi, who explains the importance of seeds as small projects of life. During the visits, each participant will receive a precious seed as a gift, stored in a hand-folded paper “bag”, the same type used by the cataloguers.

The Casa del Pozzo (House of the Well) will also be open to the public, with the installation Botanica Meraviglia (Botanical Wonder), where Prof. Michelangelo Gruttadauria, President of the University Museum System (Unipa Heritage), in his academic capacity as a chemist, will show the public the fragrant essential oils extracted from the petals, flowers or leaves of the Garden: clementines, myrtle, sweet orange, grapefruit, cypress and fir, which visitors can smell and take home on a tester.

In addition, visitors will be able to enter the Sala Tineo for a special tour and travel back in time to the origins of life with the multimedia installation created by ODD Agency, “Il Pianeta delle piante” (The Planet of Plants).

The University will also open the Doderlein Zoology Museum for special tours, with its extraordinary collection of fish that tells the story of an ecosystem that has disappeared in Sicily, preserved using a technique that remains a secret, and the Gemmellaro Geological Museum to talk about volcanoes, starting with the museum's exceptional finds from Ferdinandea Island, which emerged in the Sicilian Sea in 1831, opposite Sciacca, and disappeared below sea level a few months later, leaving behind tons of coral.

All contributions from visitors to the Biodiversity Festival will be donated by the Le Vie dei Tesori Foundation to its Restoration Fund, which has already financed the restoration of the sphinxes of the Gymnasium and the restoration of the skeleton of the historic lion at the Botanical Garden.