Sanremo is known worldwide as the City of Flowers: elegant roses with long stems and tall petals, fragrant carnations, colourful begonias and camellias are cultivated here. The great skill of hybrid breeders, combined with the expert care of farmers and favourable climate, has made it possible to produce flowers on the Sanremo hills that are exported all over the world. The symbolic flowers are carnations, roses and marigolds, replaced in the last decades by mimosa and buttercups. Sanremo’s velvety roses are famous all over the world and at the end of the nineteenth century travellers opened their windows to smell the citrus fruit. Today private and public gardens are one of the jewels of the city, which has dedicated a statue to Spring on Corso Imperatrice.

A museum is dedicated to this marvel of nature, housed in the Winter Villa of the lush park of Villa Ormond in Sanremo. The Floriseum – Museo del Fiore in Sanremo– is located in the park of Villa Ormond, the largest and most spectacular public city garden. The museum is located in the Villino Winter, a building that once served as guest quarters for the splendid ancient villa situated at the top of the park, built in 1895 by architect Emile Reverdin for the wealthy Swiss family. The garden of Villa Ormond in Sanremo has a room-like layout with very characteristic plant environments: palm groves, cedars, a ficus area, while the central part is modelled on the typical Italian garden. The most significant plants are those grouped in the palmetumwith two groups of large reclining Phoenix palms, some Jacaranda mimosifolia, large ficus, palms of the Phoenix dactylifera species. A great variety of plants has been assembled from all over the world, offering the beauty of a landscape that unites palm trees, araucaria, cypresses, carob trees, ficus centenari, and more in a single garden.