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The present Orto Botanico dell’Università di Parma, located in the city’s old town, extends itself on a surface of 11.500 mq. The central green area has still its 18^th century appearance of Italian style garden; the oriental part is occupied by the arboretum, which was created between ‘700 and ’800 and it is rich in rare species; in the occidental side an English style garden has been recreated, respecting the landscape character of the vegetable garden.
It was created in 1770 by the abbot Giambattista Guatteri, who was holder of the Botany chair in the university on the behalf of Ferdinando I di Borbone, in order to improve the previous  Orto dei Semplici, next to the faculty of Medicine, for the cultivation of the needed medical plants, which had been founded in 1630 by Ranuccio I Farnese.
The abbot Giambattista Guatteri introduced the applied study of plants, which allowed him to make exotic plants acclimate, which would have been cultivated in greenhouses otherwise, and to increase the importance of  Parma’s vegetable garden, which was considered one of the most important ones in Europe. In 1793 the greenhouses were built, the designs were made by the court architect Ennemond Petitot, to replace the preexisting rudimentary warehouses and reorganise the front garden.
In the second half of the 19^th century the vegetable garden was reorganised by implanting an arboretum and a herbarium of the most important plants.
In 1950, the director Fausto Lona widened the existing buildings, creating an ensemble of habitats climatically suitable for the studies about the photoperiod and thermoperiod of the plants; a greenhouse for alpine plants serra; a greenhouse for tropical and subtropical plants.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)