Orto e Museo Botanico dell'Università di Pisa

The University of Pisa's Botanic Garden and Museum combines a two-hectare garden of historic plant collections with a museum devoted to botanical teaching and research.

Why it matters

Founded in 1543 at Luca Ghini's request, the garden is identified by the University of Pisa as the world's oldest university botanic garden. Ghini, a physician and botanist from Imola, joined the university on the condition that he could establish a university Garden of Simples for medicinal-plant study. After two moves, the garden settled at its present site in 1591, where it has developed over more than four centuries.

What to notice

Centuries-old trees give the garden its scale. Succulent beds bring together plants from African and American deserts, while ponds and wetland beds represent Tuscan marsh flora. Aromatic plants recall the medicinal collections the garden was founded to cultivate. Iron-framed greenhouses shelter delicate species. The Botanic Museum preserves the Quadreria of seventeenth-century portraits of botanists, the monumental entrance door to the old Galleria and the Studiolo once used to study and preserve the garden's seeds.

Context and history

Founded under Cosimo I de' Medici, the garden shaped the development of botanical teaching and research in Pisa. Its collections contributed to the university's later scientific institutions, including the natural-history museum at Calci. The botany institute built on the site in the 1590s has a facade decorated with seashells, a feature added in 1752, and houses the museum. The Museo Botanico was reinstalled in the old foundry building in 2016 and opened to the public the following spring.