If you had to condense Tuscany’s centuries-old bond with medicinal plants into a single story, you would end up in Sansepolcro, at the crossroads between botany, science and culture that story is Aboca.
Born as an organic herb farm in the late 1970s, Aboca has grown into a natural healthcare company, a museum dedicated to herbs and healing, and even a publishing house that curates one of Italy’s most intriguing catalogues on the relationship between humans and nature. This article traces Aboca’s origins, the scientific choices behind its products, and its cultural ecosystem, botanical gardens, historic herbals and the “Bibliotheca Antiqua”, with practical pointers on how to experience it all in Tuscany.
Origins: from a Tuscan hillside to a new way of thinking about health
The Aboca story begins in spring 1978, when Valentino Mercati founded the company in Sansepolcro with a simple but radical intuition: re-centre health around truly natural substances, studied with scientific rigour rather than nostalgia. The name and project took root on a hillside rich in springs above the Tiber valley; what started as an organic herb farm supplying pharmacies and herbalists quickly evolved thanks to in-house research and analysis laboratories. By 1984, Aboca had obtained authorization as an “Officina farmaceutica” (pharmaceutical facility), laying the foundations for a portfolio of evidence-based, plant-derived medical devices and supplements.
From the outset, the company pursued a “systems medicine” approach reading the human body as an interconnected network and looking for solutions within the complexity of natural molecular structures, not isolated single molecules. That philosophy still defines the product pipeline today.
Seed to science: organic hectares, good practices, clinical validation
Aboca’s strength is a fully vertically integrated supply chain from seed to finished product. Across Tuscany and Umbria, the group cultivates over 1,400–1,700 hectares of certified-organic medicinal plants (around 80 species), managed according to Good Agricultural and Collection Practices specific to herbal raw materials. The goal is to protect soil vitality and biodiversity while guaranteeing consistent pharmacognostic profiles for research and production.
On the industrial side, Aboca develops 100% natural, biodegradable products, primarily natural-substance medical devices for self-care, grounded in pharmacological and clinical studies and designed to act with multitarget mechanisms that mirror nature’s complexity. As of recent years, the company counts 1,800+ employees and operates in two dozen countries, a scale that emerged without abandoning its agricultural DNA.
This growth path is tied to a sustainability framework made legally explicit by Aboca’s status as a Benefit Corporation and its B Corp certification (achieved in 2019), with an annual Impact Report measuring social and environmental outcomes.
Culture as a second root: Aboca Museum and the Bibliotheca Antiqua
To understand Aboca’s identity you have to step off the production floor and enter Palazzo Bourbon del Monte in Sansepolcro. Here, in 2002, the company founded the Aboca Museum, an historical-scientific itinerary called “Herbs and Health over the Centuries”. The visit unfolds through rooms lined with precious herbals (early printed books on medicinal plants), pharmaceutical tools (mortars, apothecary jars, glassware) and faithfully reconstructed historic workshops, all perfumed quite literally by living medicinal plants. The museum’s mission is to safeguard and transmit the millennia-long relationship between humans and healing herbs.
The museum houses the Bibliotheca Antiqua, a curated collection of ancient botanical-medical volumes, from illustrated herbals to rare pharmacopeias, partly digitized for scholars and the public. For visitors, this is where the “book of nature” and the nature of books meet: you can trace how Renaissance botanists classified simples, how apothecaries compounded remedies, and how images spread botanical knowledge across Europe.
Practical note: the museum sits in the historic centre (Via Niccolò Aggiunti, 75) and keeps seasonal opening hours; always check the official page for current times before planning your trip.
From lab to library: Aboca Edizioni and a broader conversation
In the 2010s Aboca chose to publish, transforming corporate culture into public discourse. Aboca Edizioni, the group’s publishing house, was created to foster reflection on health, sustainability, agriculture, science, rights and new development models, while also venturing into literature. Alongside non-fiction and facsimile editions linked to the museum’s research centre, the imprint curates the fiction series “Il Bosco degli Scrittori” (The Writers’ Wood), inviting contemporary authors to start from a tree to rethink our bond with nature.
By pairing editorial projects with museum curation, Aboca extends its mission beyond products: botanical gardens and experimental plots on the estates provide the raw material; the museum preserves memory; the publisher pushes ideas into the wider cultural arena. It’s a triad, farm, lab, library, that has few equals in Europe.
How to experience Aboca in Tuscany
1) Walk the herb trail through centuries. Start at the Aboca Museum to see herbals, mortars and reconstructed apothecaries, then dive into the Bibliotheca Antiqua online catalogue to connect the artefacts with primary sources. The Palazzo’s Renaissance setting amplifies the sensory, scholarly appeal.
2) Read the ideas behind the remedies. Browse Aboca Edizioni for essays on systems medicine, ecology and the common good or pick up titles from The Writers’ Wood for a narrative angle on nature. Many volumes are sparked by the museum’s research pathways.
3) Look beyond the showcase. Remember that what you see in the palazzo is rooted in living agriculture: those organic hectares across Tuscany and Umbria are the company’s open-air laboratory, where species are propagated under GACP and biodiversity-first practices.
Why Aboca matters
Aboca is often cited as a European case study in aligning a natural, scientific approach to health with cultural stewardship and sustainability metrics. It’s a Tuscan answer to a global question: can modern healthcare draw on botanical complexity without reducing plants to single active ingredients and can a company turn that answer into education, conservation and books? Aboca’s long arc from 1978 to today suggests yes.
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