Botanical gardens are a special kind of “museum”: they afford unique insights into the world of living plants, and their appearance changes from one day to the next. The Dresden garden, opened in 1893 and arranged for the most part geographically, offers a botanical world tour within a minimum of space. The outdoor gardens and the three glasshouses that can be visited contain about 10,000 plant species from all five continents and from the most diverse climatic zones. Visitors will always find something familiar and something new. Especially worthy of note are the unique collections of summer-flowering annuals and of pelargonium species, and a large number of plants with medicinal or other uses.