Il Prato della Valle e l'Orto Botanico

The Botanical Garden of Padua is a precious repository of medical knowledge, a place of learning, research, and botanical experimentation, starting from 1545 when it was established by decree of the Venetian Republic, as the first university Botanical Garden in the world for the cultivation of medicinal plants.

Since then, it has been continuously enriched with new specimens and species from various parts of the world, particularly from countries with which the Serenissima had trade relations and, with the discovery of America, also from the New World. It played a key role in the introduction of exotic plants that were planted there to be acclimatized and then spread throughout Italy and all of Europe.

It is the oldest university botanical garden in the world, which has preserved its structure and location unchanged over the centuries, and in 1997 it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Currently, about 7200 plants are cultivated there, distributed among the various collections, within the 16th-century Hortus Cintus, the Arboretum – a forest of tall trees - and the new climate-controlled greenhouses inaugurated in 2014, and it occupies a total area of about 37 thousand square meters.