Pier Andrea Saccardo (1845-1920) was botanical assistant to Roberto De Visiani, Prefect of the Botanical Garden, and succeeded him in the office. Fascinated by plants as a boy, he began to take an interest in fungi during the early 1870s. For the next forty years, mycology, and especially certain groups of fungi — mycromycetes — became the main focus of his research. With the criteria for a classification of fungi established, he set to work on his most important opus, the Sylloge fungorum, twenty-two volumes that brought the number of known species of fungi in the world to around 72,000. The fundamental element of this monumental work, written together with a number of helpers, including his son Domenico, is his collection: started around 1874, it features specimens found in the provinces of Treviso and Padua, along with others sent by colleagues and friends from all over Italy and abroad. Left to the Museum on Saccardo’s death, it is a collection consisting of some 69,000 specimens, mainly inserted in envelopes pinned to sheets. More than 18,500 species are catalogued, some of which now synonymized, and more than 4,000 types, making this mycotheque an especially important point of reference for scholars around the globe.