The Botanical Garden of Padua

The Botanical Garden of Padua was built from a need of the inhabitants and after almost 500 years it has turned into a real destination; in 1997 it was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Where does this need come from?? In the 16th century the science of medicine was based almost exclusively on the use of 'curative' herbs, but mistakes in the recognition of these plants or fraud by unscrupulous traders were frequent.
So the University of Padua, through its Professor Francesco Bonafede, decided to set up a medicinal garden where local or exotic plants could be grown and studied. The rarity of these plants was already known at the time so the entire perimeter of the garden was protected by a boundary wall, which still exists today.

This type of protection combined with its proximity to Venice, from whose port all kinds of plants and herbs were transported, made the fortune of the Botanical Garden of Padua. Today, the Botanical Garden has not lost its original meaning and continues to be a place where a great variety of plants are collected, observed and studied. The centre houses more than 3500 of those.

As mentioned above, the Botanical Garden of Padua is also a real destination for tourists and city dwellers alike, as it can be visited in its entirety and there are numerous internal routes to learn from and be inspired by. Particular mention should be made of the "Garden of Biodiversity", the Garden's exhibition project, where visitors can literally travel the world: starting with simple questions such as "What is a plant?", they are taken on a journey of discovery through the various climates and areas of the planet, in what is a veritable simulator of "different environments and worlds". You will discover that, in the end, human and plant intelligence have a lot in common.