ORTO BOTANICO DELL’UNIVERSITÀ DI PAVIA

Founded in 1773 in the context of the Teresian and Josephine reforms of the Athenaeum, the’Botanical Garden of the University of Pavia holds a historical and scientific heritage of extraordinary value. Over time, it has hosted the work of illustrious scientists, including the botanist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, to whom we owe the original layout. From this first historical core, one can still admire the monumental Platanus hispanica, a colossus about 50 metres high, and the ancient Piermarini Greenhouses, structured in two wings housing collections of cycads and succulent plants.

Directly opposite the greenhouses are the loungers with medicinal plants and experimental crops. Not far away are the Briosi's 19th-century greenhouse, dedicated to exotic useful plants, and the Tropical greenhouse created in the 1970s by Ruggero Tomaselli to house equatorial species. Also dating from the same period is the Orchid greenhouse, located in the southern part of the garden and adjacent to the Roseto, which collects wild roses, old varieties and modern hybrids.

The route continues between the’Gymnosperm arboretum and that of the angiosperms, to a tank dedicated to the aquatic and marsh flora of the Po Valley. On the north side of the building stands the’tea garden, where, since the end of the 19th century, shrubs of Camellia sinensis ‘ticinensis’, next to the trays protecting the very rare Isoëtes malinverniana, an aquatic fern endemic to the Lomellina and Vercellese areas.

Today, the autonomous visit experience is even more accessible and interactive thanks to a signage for children, to a web app with botanical treasure hunt and an in-depth study on the’local avifaunaThe latter is accessible by means of wooden templates depicting the birds that inhabit the Garden, which can be observed or heard throughout the year.