Orto Botanico di Roma

Sapienza University's Botanical Garden occupies twelve hectares on the Janiculum's Trastevere slope. Its collections include roughly 3,500 plant species, monumental trees, greenhouses, a Japanese garden and plantings that reflect its history as both a scientific institution and aristocratic landscape.

Why it matters

The garden combines research, teaching and conservation with centuries of botanical history. Christina of Sweden rented the property in the seventeenth century; in 1883, the Italian state acquired the grounds from the Corsini family for the university's botanical garden. Terraces from the aristocratic estate remain part of the landscape. The garden holds more than 300 old trees, a large bamboo collection and roughly 2,000 square metres of greenhouses.

What to notice

The monumental trees include oriental planes, cork oaks and Himalayan cedars. The gymnosperm collection includes sequoias, conifers, cedars of Lebanon, cypresses and junipers, while the Mediterranean woodland features oaks. The greenhouses include the nineteenth-century Serra Corsini, with succulents, an orchid house and a tropical house. Other areas include the Giardino degli Aromi, a Japanese garden with cherry trees, camellias and ponds, a fern valley, aquatic-plant basins and a rose garden.

Context and history

The garden's institutional lineage reaches back to papal botanical plantings. A garden was planted within the Vatican walls under Nicholas III in 1278; a viridarium moved to the Belvedere under Nicholas V in 1447. Innocent VIII established a Simpliciarius, and in 1514 Leo X created a university chair for teaching medicinal plants. In 1660 Alexander VII gave Sapienza land on the Janiculum for a university garden. Its collections later moved to the Palazzo Salviati garden in 1820 and the convent of San Lorenzo in Panisperna in 1876. In 1883, the state acquired the Corsini villa: the palace became home to the Accademia dei Lincei and the garden to the Orto Botanico. Pietro Romualdo Pirotta, its first director, established the naturalistic layout. Christina of Sweden rented the Palazzo Riario from 1659 to 1689; the Corsini family bought the property in 1729 and had Ferdinando Fuga renovate it in 1736.