Description
The Pietro Castelli Botanical Garden is the scientific garden of the University of Messina, a hectare of green on Piazza XX Settembre, right in the city centre. Founded in 1638, it is a quiet oasis where trees from half the world grow alongside plants found only in Sicily.
The garden's giants are the stars of the visit: the huge Calabrian pines (Pinus brutia), the dracaenas, known as dragon trees, the great Australian Ficus macrophylla, the ginkgo, the Canary Island palms and the tall Washingtonia palms.
Among the most curious corners are the tropical fruit trees, such as mango, guava, cherimoya and feijoa, then the tree ferns, the Amazonian lianas, the Bolivian tipuana and the South African Cape chestnut. In the ponds grow water lilies and papyrus, both from the Nile and from the nearby Ciane river, near Syracuse.
Botany lovers can look for the species endemic to Sicily, such as the fern Woodwardia radicans and the Fritillaria messanensis, which carries the city's name in its own. The garden's emblem is a small Sicilian sea lavender, Limonium sibthorpianum.
Its founder was Pietro Castelli, a Roman physician and botanist who had directed the Farnese Gardens in Rome, and whom Messina won over in a contest with the University of Padua. His “Garden of Simples” lay along the city walls, behind Porta Imperiale, a strip about 560 metres long: the first botanical garden in Sicily.
In 1640 Castelli published its catalogue, the Hortus Messanensis, with the plants divided into fourteen classes. In 1661 he was succeeded by Marcello Malpighi, the father of histology, who made many of the microscope observations collected in his works on the plants of this very garden.
From then on, the garden's story followed the city's. After the anti-Spanish revolt of 1678 the Spanish punished Messina by closing its university, and the garden was destroyed. It was reborn only in 1889, on four hectares entrusted to the botanist Antonino Borzì.
The 1908 earthquake struck it again: most of its grounds were covered with shelters for the homeless, which later became houses. That is why, of the four hectares of the time, only one remains, thick with centuries-old trees.
The garden's giants are the stars of the visit: the huge Calabrian pines (Pinus brutia), the dracaenas, known as dragon trees, the great Australian Ficus macrophylla, the ginkgo, the Canary Island palms and the tall Washingtonia palms.
Among the most curious corners are the tropical fruit trees, such as mango, guava, cherimoya and feijoa, then the tree ferns, the Amazonian lianas, the Bolivian tipuana and the South African Cape chestnut. In the ponds grow water lilies and papyrus, both from the Nile and from the nearby Ciane river, near Syracuse.
Botany lovers can look for the species endemic to Sicily, such as the fern Woodwardia radicans and the Fritillaria messanensis, which carries the city's name in its own. The garden's emblem is a small Sicilian sea lavender, Limonium sibthorpianum.
Its founder was Pietro Castelli, a Roman physician and botanist who had directed the Farnese Gardens in Rome, and whom Messina won over in a contest with the University of Padua. His “Garden of Simples” lay along the city walls, behind Porta Imperiale, a strip about 560 metres long: the first botanical garden in Sicily.
In 1640 Castelli published its catalogue, the Hortus Messanensis, with the plants divided into fourteen classes. In 1661 he was succeeded by Marcello Malpighi, the father of histology, who made many of the microscope observations collected in his works on the plants of this very garden.
From then on, the garden's story followed the city's. After the anti-Spanish revolt of 1678 the Spanish punished Messina by closing its university, and the garden was destroyed. It was reborn only in 1889, on four hectares entrusted to the botanist Antonino Borzì.
The 1908 earthquake struck it again: most of its grounds were covered with shelters for the homeless, which later became houses. That is why, of the four hectares of the time, only one remains, thick with centuries-old trees.