The Orto Botanico di Padova is the oldest university botanical garden still standing on its original site. Its circular Renaissance garden, laid out in 1545, and the palm tree that inspired Goethe’s theory of plant metamorphosis make it as much a place of ideas as of plants.
At a glance
The Orto Botanico occupies a modest plot near the centre of Padua, built around a circular garden known as the Hortus Sphaericus. This original core, roughly 84 metres across, is inscribed within a square and divided into four quadrants by paths running north-south and east-west, a geometry designed by the Venetian architect and scholar Daniele Barbaro to represent the ordered cosmos of botanical knowledge. A circular water channel once surrounded the garden, partly to deter theft of plants that in the sixteenth century could be extraordinarily valuable.
Beyond the historic circle, the garden has grown to include an arboretum with trees dating back to the seventeenth century, a set of themed gardens added between 1989 and 2014 covering tropical, alpine, Mediterranean and biodiversity themes, plus a sensory garden for blind visitors, and a group of seventeenth-century iron-and-glass greenhouses said to be among the oldest surviving botanical greenhouses anywhere.
Key facts
- Founded: 1545, by authorisation of the Venetian Senate, as a garden of medicinal ‘simples’ for the University of Padua medical school
- Designer: Daniele Barbaro (1514–1570), Venetian humanist and architect, who conceived the circular layout
- Collection: around 6,000 plant species across the historic circular garden, the arboretum, the newer themed gardens and the historic greenhouses
- Landmark specimen: the Goethe Palm, a date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) planted in 1585 and still growing in its original position
- Recognition: inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997 (reference 825)
History
The garden was founded following a petition to the Venetian Senate in April 1545 by Francesco Bonafede, the first professor of the ‘Reading of Simples’ at Padua, who argued that medical students needed to observe living plants rather than rely solely on written texts and herbaria. The Senate approved the proposal unanimously on 29 June 1545. That same year the University of Pisa also established a botanical garden, and the two gardens have long disputed the claim to priority. Padua’s, however, is the one that has remained continuously on its original site.
The garden’s early prefects included figures connected to Luca Ghini, the Bolognese botanist credited with inventing the pressed herbarium, though Ghini himself never took up residence in Padua; the first resident director was Pietro Antonio Michiel. The garden became known for introducing plants to Europe for the first time, including an early cultivation of the sunflower recorded in 1568, and later records showing jasmine and potato in its catalogues around 1590, the latter representing a separate introduction from the Americas via Venice alongside the better-known Spanish route. The garden was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997.
What you see
The visit centres on the Hortus Sphaericus, the original circular garden, best appreciated by walking its central north-south axis for an overview before exploring the four quadrants, which traditionally correspond to the plant regions of the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. At the geometric centre stands a sixteenth-century stone well. In the northeast section of this original garden grows the Goethe Palm, a date palm planted in 1585 and now protected by a glass enclosure installed to shield it from the red palm weevil, a pest that has affected Italian palms since 2004. A plaque beside it records the species and date, alongside a line Goethe wrote of the garden in his account of his Italian journey.
The seventeenth-century greenhouses hold some of the collection’s rarer specimens, including species of Chamaedorea, among the smallest palms in the world, and the Coco de Mer, whose seed is the largest in the plant kingdom. The Giardino della Biodiversità, a modern extension completed in 2014, groups plants by biome across tropical, arid, temperate and mountain greenhouses.
Practical information
- Location: Via Orto Botanico 15, Padua
- Tickets and combined visits: tickets, including options combined with the Scrovegni Chapel, can be booked through the garden’s official website; current prices and hours should be checked there
- Suggested time: around two hours to cover the historic garden, greenhouses and newer themed sections
Getting there
The Orto Botanico sits within walking distance of central Padua, close to other major sights including the Scrovegni Chapel and the Palazzo della Ragione, making it easy to combine with a wider visit to the historic centre.
Nearby
- Cappella degli Scrovegni — a short walk away, home to Giotto’s fresco cycle of 1304–1305
- Palazzo della Ragione — in Padua’s historic centre, one of the city’s principal medieval civic buildings
Sources
- Università di Padova
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italienische Reise (1817)
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