Description
The Botanical Garden of Siena is the University's garden, on Via Mattioli, near Porta Tufi, inside the walls.
It covers about two and a half hectares of a slope and combines beds of medicinal plants, a small park with exotic trees, a proper small farm and the greenhouses, among them an old one from 1875.
It all began with the plants that healed the sick. In the early seventeenth century the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala had its Orto dei Semplici, where medicinal herbs were grown.
In 1784 Grand Duke Peter Leopold turned it into the university's botanical garden, and in 1856, to have more space, it was moved here, near the Accademia dei Fisiocritici.
The entrance on the street, opened in 1866, is embellished by two pools with aquatic plants. In 1964 the area was doubled, with new buildings for the university institutes that enclosed a small nineteenth-century cold greenhouse.
The slope is divided into three sectors. At the top is the school, with artificial terraces and rectangular beds for the plants used in pharmacy, perfumery and cooking.
Further downhill is the park, with exotic trees and shrubs that survive outdoors, such as the quince, the pomegranate and the jujube, along with plants of central and southern Tuscany and a collection of gymnosperms.
At the bottom is the farm, where an attempt was made to recall what the land inside the walls was like. Fruit trees studied by researchers grow here; a rock garden and a fernery, recently built, show Tuscan plants from natural habitats that are rarely seen.
Three greenhouses house the exotic plants. In the warm greenhouse, built in 1875 of iron and colored glass, grow orchids, ferns and agaves; in another greenhouse are plants from semi-desert environments, such as American cacti and African euphorbias.
The size and layout of today are due to the directors who have succeeded one another over time. So the garden sums up the history of the university: from a garden of healing plants, as in the seventeenth century, to a place of research on fruit plants and on collections of exotic species.
It covers about two and a half hectares of a slope and combines beds of medicinal plants, a small park with exotic trees, a proper small farm and the greenhouses, among them an old one from 1875.
It all began with the plants that healed the sick. In the early seventeenth century the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala had its Orto dei Semplici, where medicinal herbs were grown.
In 1784 Grand Duke Peter Leopold turned it into the university's botanical garden, and in 1856, to have more space, it was moved here, near the Accademia dei Fisiocritici.
The entrance on the street, opened in 1866, is embellished by two pools with aquatic plants. In 1964 the area was doubled, with new buildings for the university institutes that enclosed a small nineteenth-century cold greenhouse.
The slope is divided into three sectors. At the top is the school, with artificial terraces and rectangular beds for the plants used in pharmacy, perfumery and cooking.
Further downhill is the park, with exotic trees and shrubs that survive outdoors, such as the quince, the pomegranate and the jujube, along with plants of central and southern Tuscany and a collection of gymnosperms.
At the bottom is the farm, where an attempt was made to recall what the land inside the walls was like. Fruit trees studied by researchers grow here; a rock garden and a fernery, recently built, show Tuscan plants from natural habitats that are rarely seen.
Three greenhouses house the exotic plants. In the warm greenhouse, built in 1875 of iron and colored glass, grow orchids, ferns and agaves; in another greenhouse are plants from semi-desert environments, such as American cacti and African euphorbias.
The size and layout of today are due to the directors who have succeeded one another over time. So the garden sums up the history of the university: from a garden of healing plants, as in the seventeenth century, to a place of research on fruit plants and on collections of exotic species.