The Botanical Garden of Padua was created in 1545 and is the oldest university botanical garden in the world. The Garden is in the heart of the city, not far from Prato della Valle, between the Basilica of Sant'Antonio and the Basilica of Santa Giustina.
The Botanical Garden of Padua was created for the study of medicinal plants and has played an important role in understanding the relationships between nature and culture; over the centuries plants from different parts of the world have been added to the Garden where today there are 3,500 different species.
The decision to inscribe this property in the UNESCO World Heritage List dates to 1997 and was made with the following reason: “The Botanical Garden of Padua is the original of all botanical gardens throughout the world, and represents the birth of science, of scientific exchanges, and understanding of the relationship between nature and culture. It has made a profound contribution to the development of many modern scientific disciplines, notably botany, medicine, chemistry, ecology, and pharmacy.”
In 2014, the Garden of Biodiversity was inaugurated in the old Garden: these are five large greenhouses with five different climatic environments and 1,300 species that tell the story of the extraordinary vegetation of the Earth.
