SPRING
2023
We cultivate harmony and beauty: the discovery of the botanical garden of Pisa and Palermo
In the world there are about 1400 botanical gardens and arboretums with over 100 million visitors a year. A good part is found in Europe and over thirty, among university and other botanical gardens, in Italy. Italy has a historical record in terms of botanical gardens; the first structures of this type, no longer existing, were founded in Italy in the thirteenth century in Rome, at the Vatican, and in the fourteenth century in Salerno.
These gardens had the function of showing the plants of medical use, as well as the university botanical gardens, still existing, built in the sixteenth century in Padua, Pisa and Florence. Most of the Italian botanical gardens were founded in the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries. Thanks to the enormous development of plant systematics, following the introduction of the Linnean nomenclature, botanical gardens became places of observation, as well as places of experimentation and acclimatization of new species. For example, at the Botanical Garden of Palermo was described the Ficus magnolioides, a still living specimen.
Let’s start our discovery from the oldest botanical garden, that of Pisa. The Botanical Garden of Pisa was founded in 1543 at the explicit request of Luca Ghini, physician and botanist from Imola. He was called by Cosimo the 1st De' Medici as professor at the University of Pisa, he accepted on the sole condition of being able to establish a university "Garden of the Simple". For this reason was born the oldest university botanical garden in the world, in Pisa, near the bank of the Arno.
The Garden has subsequently changed location twice: in 1563 by Andrea Cesalpino, a student of Luca Ghini, and in 1591 (current location, next to the famous Piazza dei Miracoli) by Giuseppe Casabona. The Botanical Garden of Pisa is organized, mainly with historical criteria, in seven sectors: Botanical School, Cedar Garden, Myrtle Garden, Greenhouses, Archangels' Square, New Garden, Del Gratta Garden. Each sector hosts one or more collections organized on a scientific basis. The current extension of the Botanical Garden is about two hectares and there are cultivated about 3,000 plants.
Going south, in Sicily, we can make two stops, one in Palermo and another in Catania.
The Botanical Garden of the University of Palermo is one of the most important Italian academic institutions.
Considered a huge open-air museum, it boasts over two hundred years of activities that have also allowed the study and dissemination, in Sicily, in Europe and throughout the Mediterranean basin, of countless species.
The peculiarity of this Botanical Garden is represented today by the great variety of plant species housed, many originating from tropical and subtropical regions, which make it a place rich in expressions of different flowers.
The origin of the Botanical Garden of Palermo dates back to the last decades of the eighteenth century, when it began, in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, a historical phase characterized by numerous reforms and major openings in the sign of European culture of the Enlightenment mark.
Foundation of the Royal Academy of Studies of Palermo, corresponding to the current University, dates back to 1779: The Chair of Natural History and Botany was created and the Academy obtained from the City Senate to be able to take advantage of a small plot of land on the Bulwark of Porta Carini to allocate it to the Botanical Garden to serve the exhibition of 'simple', or to the cultivation of medicinal plants useful for teaching, but only from 22 February 1789 the plant of the new Botanical Garden moved to the lands of the Vigna del Gallo in the Sant'Erasmo plan.
More recently, the Botanic Garden in Catania has been created. It was around the middle of the nineteenth century that began to mature, in a context of fervent research and botanical studies, the ambitious project of a Botanical Garden in Catania. But we can say that this garden is remembered for its inaugural ceremony that was made precisely July 31, 1858, Birthday of S. M. the Queen, there were the highest civil authorities, the Faculty Members, s Legal Entities representative, the Bishop blessed the first stone.
The Botanical Garden of Catania covers an area of about 16,000 square meters. The project was drawn up by the architect Mario Di Stefano who also realized the refined neoclassical building. In the silence of its paths live several collections, among these the main ones are those of succulents, palms and wild Sicilian plants. It is the scientific and research laboratory of the Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences of the University of Catania that through this "green museum" educates on environmental issues and protects natural species. Besides being a place of study and research, the Botanical Garden is a place open to the city and its visitors.
Credits to University of Pisa, University of Palermo, University of Catania