Description of the attraction
The Botanical Garden of Palermo, covering an area of 10 hectares, combines the functions of the botanical garden itself and the research and educational center of the University of Palermo. It is located within the city limits at an altitude of 10 meters above sea level.
The first mention of the garden dates back to 1779, when the Academy of Royal Sciences created the Department of Botanical and Medicinal Farms. For this, a modest piece of land was allocated, on which it was supposed to set up a small botanical garden for the cultivation of medicinal plants for the purpose of their study and use in medicine. In 1786, the garden occupied its current territory near Piano di Sant Erasmo. In 1789, construction began on the main administrative buildings - the Gymnasium, Tepidarium and Caldarius were erected in the neoclassical style by the French architect Léon Duforny, who also worked on the design of the old part of the garden. The gymnasium, located at the main entrance, was the main office of the botanical garden, which housed the herbarium, the library and the director's office. The other two buildings contained plants from warm and temperate climates.
The oldest part of the garden consists of a rectangular area divided into 4 squares, in each of which plants are placed according to the Linnaean classification. There is a small square in the center of this zone.
The grand opening of the botanical garden took place in 1795. A year later, the Aquarium was built here - a large pool with various aquatic plant species, divided into 24 zones, as well as the Maria Carolina greenhouse, donated by the Queen of Austria and finally completed in 1823. Today, there are several greenhouses in the botanical garden, where you can see succulents, bananas, papayas, plants of humid climatic zones and ferns. In the experimental zone, tropical and subtropical plants are grown for research purposes. In addition, there is a herbarium in the garden covering an area of 6 thousand square meters. and stores about 250 thousand samples of plants, algae, lichens and fungi, and a genetic bank, created in 1993 to preserve the unique genetic material of the local flora.
In the middle of the 19th century, a huge large-leaved ficus was brought from distant Australia, which became a symbol of the Botanical Garden of Palermo and its main attraction. Another "highlight" of the garden is the colony of Indian ringed parrots that escaped from the enclosures of the nearby Villa Julia and settled in the subtropical zone of the garden.
