Right behind the beautiful square of Prato della Valle in Padua, one of the biggest ones in Europe, there is a little naturalistic treasure for all plants’ lovers and not just for them: the Botanical Garden.
Surrounded by any imaginable sort of botanical species, we started off a tour right here, following the footsteps of one of the most famous American writers of the XIX century, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who set in this same garden its best short story, “Rapaccini’s Daughter”.
After reliving those pages among poisonous and carnivorous plants and brightly coloured flowers all guarded inside the garden, we found ourselves in front of one more marvellous sight: we had just entered the Biodiversity Garden.
Designed by Strapazzon in 2014 and built next to the ancient Botanic Garden dating back to 1545, besides being a journey through plants, architecture and humanity, it represents the most recent and innovative (thanks to its brilliant technological structure) piece of architecture in the city of Padua.
It does not only show off a remarkable design, but it is also extremely functional: a huge greenhouse containing almost 1300 different species of plants placed inside suitable rooms where temperature and humidity are being monitored for their own survival. It should not be of any surprise then, if it happens to jump from a tropical environment, through a barren one, to finish off into a Mediterranean climate!
After our visit at the Botanical Garden we moved on to Prato della Valle where we were widely briefed about oddities and mysteries about the Isola Memmia. For example, if the Canaletta flows into a circle, where does the water that irrigates the lawn come from? All you need to do is to find it out for yourself as we also did!
Do you want to know more? ortobotanicopd
