Pisa Museo Aperto

Location(s)

Pisa’s botanical garden was created by Cosimo I de’ Medici shortly before the middle of the 16th century. Yet the first botanical garden in Pisa was not in the same place where it stands now, that is next to Via Santa Maria and the cathedral square. It was located close to the Medicean shipyards, near the river and the Old Citadel (Cittadella Vecchia). The first director of the botanical garden, namely the prefetto, was Luca Ghini in 1543. At that time the garden was called “Giardino dei Semplici” or also “Orto Navale”, since it was placed close to the shipyards. Few years later, practical reasons induced to transfer the botanical garden to the gardens of Santa Marta monastery (in Via Santa Marta), in the nort-eastern area of the city, the quarter of San Francesco.

Eventually, in 1595 grand duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici decided to transfer the botanical gardens to the present site, under the direction of prefetto Giuseppe Casabona. Nonetheless, a part of the plants, above all some big trees, were left on the previous sites, as one can see in certain 16th and 17th century maps of the city. A painting of the mid 17th century by Stefano della Bella shows a group of forest trees appearing from behind the buildings of the Medicean shipyards and of the Old Citadel. The persistence of the old placename “via del Giardino” (Garden Street) in the area of via Santa Marta confirms that a green area with plants and trees survived on the same place where originally the botanical garden was.
 

Pisa’s present botanical garden covers an area of almost 3 hectares. It is the most ancient botanical garden in Italy and one of the largest. The Medici, who had a true passion for botany and gardening, imported a lot of rare plants and exotic trees, above all from Asia and Africa, but also from America. The development of Pisa University in the Modern Era, again under the will of the Medicean dinasty and later of the Lorraine, favoured the spread of botanical researches and consequently the enlargement of the botanical garden. The building of the New Botanical Institute dates back to 1890, while the so-called Ancient Institute (Istituto Antico), whose walls are decorated with shells and rocks, carries the coat of arms of the Medici with three eaglets in addition referring to the Lorraine household: a tribute to the grand duke’s wife, Cristina.

Nowadays the oldest trees in the botanical garden are a “Ginkgo Bilopa” and a “Magnolia Grandiflora”, both being more than two centuries old, dating back to the years immediately before the French Revolution, more precisely to 1787.