Giovanni Marsili, known above all as Prefect of the Botanical Garden of Padova, was a multifaceted personality: a doctor, professor of botany, traveller, but also a lover of literature and poetry and, above all, a great lover of books, to whose purchase and research he devoted himself throughout his life.

An erudite scholar, but also a lover of antiques and the fine arts, Marsili collected a large number of books throughout his life. The volumes in his library, meticulously listed in a manuscript catalogue, number over 2,500, come from various cities in Europe and around the world and range from the most varied topics: Latin and Greek classics, botany, zoology, antiquity, travel and discovery, medicine, poetry, literature and contemporary customs...  

Marsili lives in an age, the eighteenth century, rich in novelties and leavened from the point of view of philosophy, politics, science, literature, and customs. In his travels, he finds himself at the centre of this rapidly evolving world, while these cultural and political movements also arrive in Padova. Marsili finds himself, therefore, in contact with several Italian and international personalities, who on the one hand have an influence on his studies and his knowledge, and on the other hand contribute, through sales and gifts, to the enhancement of his book collection.

Thanks to a work that began with the cataloguing of his books in the year 2000, and which was continued by a project of digitisation of part of the works that belonged to Marsili, culminating in the preparation of a bibliographic exhibition and this virtual exhibition, it was possible to reconstruct, albeit virtually, the original book collection of Giovanni Marsili, which was broken up into several libraries as a result of the historical events of the twentieth century.