BIRTH
In 1779, during the reign of the Bourbon rulers of Naples and Sicily, the Royal Academy of Studies of Palermo (Regia Accademia degli Studi di Palermo) was founded. With the establishment of the chair of Natural History and Botany, the Academy obtained permission from the city’s Senate to use a modest plot of land on the Aragona bastion, near Porta Carini, formerly the site of the public gunpowder magazine. Here, in July 1780, a botanical garden was established for the cultivation of medicinal plants to support teaching activities.
As the site soon proved inadequate for educational purposes, plans for relocation began a few years after its foundation. A new location was identified on the Plain of Sant’Erasmo, on a small portion of land known as the Vigna del Gallo owned by Duke Ignazio Vanni d’Archirafi, adjacent to the public Villa Giulia, established in 1777.
The new Botanical Garden was established on its current site beginning on February 22, 1789. Six years later, in December 1795, it was officially inaugurated.
The first director of the Garden was Giuseppe Tineo (1795–1812), and the original site covered an area of approximately 12,000 square meters. Initially, the entrance was located along the road connecting the Stradone di Sant’Antonino (now Via Lincoln) to the Piano di Sant’Erasmo, which separated the Garden from Villa Giulia. After the construction of the Gymnasium was completed, access was moved to its current location, facing the new monumental complex.
The garden was originally divided into four rectangular plots (quartini) separated by two orthogonal avenues. The plant collections were arranged by Bernardino da Ucria according to the Linnaean classification system. The garden’s layout was complemented by fountains and pools, including, at its southernmost end, the Aquarium—a large basin for aquatic plants—donated by the then Archbishop of Palermo, Filippo Lopez y Royo.
EXPANSION
Between 1796 and the early decades of the 19th century, several expansions were undertaken, giving the Botanical Garden the layout that would remain largely unchanged until 1896. Portions of the Vigna del Gallo were acquired along the southern and western boundaries of the Garden to establish an exotic grove and to create space for what would later become the Winter Garden (Serra Carolina).
Subsequently, the road that separated the Garden from Villa Giulia was also annexed, and in 1819, under the directorship of Vincenzo Tineo, another expansion increased the Garden’s area by nearly one hectare.
“During the revolutionary uprisings of 1820, the Garden was subjected to looting. Within a few hours, everything was ransacked—library, collections, herbarium; all was scattered and destroyed by a frenzied and violent mob… Soldiers fortified themselves inside the Garden and defended it for eleven days. Poor Temple of Flora! Cannons rolled over the flower beds, soldiers used herbarium sheets to make gun wads, and the most beautiful copper objects ended up in the powder magazine. Eighteen thousand pots were destroyed—some used to build barricades, others thrown from the upper windows of the institute at the attackers, for lack of other projectiles.”
CURRENT LAYOUT
Many years after the unsuccessful efforts of Agostino Todaro (1856–1892), it was the then-director Antonino Borzì who, in 1906, succeeded in acquiring a plot of land that had previously belonged to the municipal nursery. This acquisition served as compensation for the portion of land taken from the Botanical Garden along Via Archirafi for the construction of the Faculty of Sciences. This expansion led to the Garden’s current configuration.
Antonino Borzì was also responsible for the creation of the Colonial Garden (Giardino Coloniale) in 1913. Under his leadership, it was progressively expanded and enriched with exotic species, particularly from the colonies and notably from Somalia, which had become an Italian territory in 1905. Following the occupation of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (now Libya) and the establishment of the Ministry of the Colonies, a Colonial Garden was officially founded within the Botanical Garden in 1913. Its purpose was to promote scientific and practical knowledge of exotic plants useful to industry and commerce, and to support the distribution of economically valuable plants to agricultural institutes and private farmers.
The Colonial Garden gained considerable prominence and development during the Fascist era, in conjunction with the rise of the Italian Empire following the conquest of Abyssinia. It was granted independent resources and operated until its closure in 1975.
Both the 1886 Master Plan of the City of Palermo and the 1946 Reconstruction Plan included proposals for a major road to cut through the Botanical Garden. The integrity of the Garden was preserved thanks to the staunch opposition of Agostino Todaro and, later, Francesco Bruno, who served as director from 1939 to 1968. It was Bruno who, in 1954—with the support of Palermo’s academic and cultural community—secured a unanimous vote by the City Council to preserve the Botanical Garden in its entirety, as it still stands today.
The Garden was officially opened to the public and assumed its role as a museum only under the directorship of Professor Andrea Di Martino, in the late 1980s.
