Botanical garden

One of the most beautiful areas of green to be admired in the capital is undoubtedly the Botanical Garden, a park in the edited and partly left in the wild, located behind the Palazzo Corsini and placed in the care of the University “La Sapienza” of Rome .

The Botanical Garden was founded in 1278 by Nicholas III, who had set up in the Vatican viridiario full of plants, which occupied part of St. Peter’s Square. In the middle of 600, Pope Alexander VII had transferred crops Vatican in the Garden of the Friars Minor, who was behind the convent of San Pietro in House. The Garden was for a long time in its full splendor by Giovan Battista Trionfetti, who enriched it with about three thousand specimens of rare and exotic plants. 1708 marked a period of decline that will end nearly four decades after the establishment of two professorships of botany at the behest of Pope Benedict XIV. Subsequently, in 1820, Pope Pius VII buy Palazzo Salviati in Lungara, and in 1823 we launched the new Botanical Garden in the city. The Botanical Garden did not have a permanent home until he was transferred in the gardens of Palazzo Riario Corsini. In 1883 Tommaso Corsini gave the City of Rome, the part of the building provided that it is intended to Lincei Academy and Museum, the Botanical Gardens and the State.

Today the Botanical Garden consists of more than 3,500 cultivated species. In it there are three different greenhouses: the first, dating from the early nineteenth century, is known as “warm greenhouse or stove” and is home to succulents, and the second and third are used to grow plants and tropical orchids. Considerable importance is attached to the collection of ferns and that of bamboo which is composed of 50 different species.

Among the many crops in them, have to remember: the Quillaja saponaria, grouped with plants “useful” because its bark is obtained saponin, the Colletia cruciata, classified as “thorny”, native to South America and characteristic for via its branches, formed by the spines large, flattened and arranged in a cross, while the leaves, small, appear in spring to early white flowers smell of chocolate and finally the Victoria Cruziana plant water belonging to the group of waterlilies that has a diameter of about two meters.