In 1931 Gerolamo Gaslini, together with his wife Lorenza, had the idea of building an institute for care and infancy named after his daughter Giannina, who died in 1917 at eleven years old, perhaps due to peritonitis which was not diagnosed in time.

[3][4] Gaslini did not accept the fact that children could die for lack of timely and adequate treatment, so he decided to create a pediatric hospital.

[4] "The thought of the conception and realization of the work that is identified in the Giannina Gaslini Institute, which is, at the same time, an instrument of good and an act of love towards my beloved, lost Creature, in the painful memory of her precocious maternal feeling, it arose and matured in my soul in the distant 1917, in the middle of the war, in certainly not propitious conditions to such an initiative."

Gaslini, indeed, established the obligation for all healthcare professionals to carry out scientific research activities which, together with the use of modern techniques and machinery, would have kept the cultural infrastructure of the Institute always up-to-date.

[4] In 1956, thanks to the excellent research activity, the Giannina Gaslini Institute was recognized as IRCCS (Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico) by the Ministry of Health.

After six years of construction, these buildings now house the clinics, the university, halls for the treatment of infectious diseases, the school for pediatric nurses, and the Institute of Mental and Moral Rehabilitation of Deficient and Abnormal Childhood.

[6] After World War II, following the damage suffered by the institute, Gerolamo Gaslini undertakes to restore its functionality and expand its capabilities.

[8] The Gaslini Institute is the largest children's hospital in northern Italy and has extensive green areas on the coast, two-thirds of which are used as a park.