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Italian Botanical Heritage

Italian Botanical Heritage is a project aimed at fostering the knowledge of the Italian botanical, artistic and cultural Italian heritage and the development of green tourism in Italy, and to become a virtual meeting platform between enthusiasts of this field.

This forest, one of the wildest in the region, stretches for about 786 acres on the limestone Prealps of Lombardy. It borders with Switzerland and with with the municipalities of Porlezza and Val Rezzo. In 2004, it was included in “Natura 2000” site collection and was acknowledged as a “Special Protection Area” (SPA). In 2007, it was declared a Reg...

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Built in 1984 by Mountain Community of Garfagnana, this garden is used mainly for educational, scientific and instructional purposes, while it collects, protects and preserves the native flora of the Upper Lucchese Apennines, with special attention to the rare and endangered species. The Garden, which falls in the southernmost part of the Tuscan-Em...

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The Miramare Castle stretches from the peninsula of Grignano, on the Gulf of Trieste. A 22-hectare romantic park frames the castle and then degrade towards the sea. Until 1855 the park area was a barren and fallow land, that the young and romantic Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg transformed into a beautiful garden, to frame the white, eclectic cast...

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This botanical garden, the oldest in Italy and covering 2.4 acres, is near the French-Italian border, on the Piccolo San Bernardo Hill, in Valle d’Aosta, at an altitude of 7.119 ft above sea level. The garden was created by the local abbot Pierre Chanoux in 1897: a passionate naturalist, he was among the first residents to ask tourists and mountain...

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Clitunno springs (Fonti del Clitunno) stretch over a 2.5-acre area along Via Flaminia, between Spoleto and Foligno, in the municipality of Campello sul Clitunno, Umbria. The whole area is served by underground springs that flow from natural cracks in the rock. There are two main outlets which actually feed the Clitunno River: the so-called “Sources...

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Pollino National Park is the widest protected area in Italy and it is named after Pollino massif. It was established in 1988 and it covers a surface of 192.565 hectares, of which 103.915 are in Calabria and the others are in Basilicata including the areas of Potenza, Matera, Cosenza and other 56 municipalities. The territory presents different char...

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Valle Introna, in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, is an ancient valley, where intense mining has been performed over the (gold in the Upper Valley and iron in Val Brevettola), although most of the inhabitants emigrated in 1600, after a great landslide. At the beginning of the XX century, the vertical slopes and the abundance of water and natu...

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Located in the territory of Vastogirardi (Isernia), the Montedimezzo Reserve, the one in Collemeluccio and that of Pescolanciano, constitute a “Biosphere Reserve”, part of the UNESCO program called “Man and Biosphere” (MaB); its main purpose is to study the relationships between man and nature, in order to develop sustainable development techniques...

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The Ducal Park of Pavullo nel Frignanno in the Modena province in Emilia Romagna has an extension of 14 hectares, from  Palazzo Ducale and Via Giardini till the slopes of Monte dei Frati, till fading in the wood. Its story is connected to the one of Palazzo Ducale, built by the duke Francesco IV d’Este (1779-1846) as a vacation residence for the co...

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“Gran Bosco della Mesola” National Reserve is located in the province of Ferrara, Emilia Romagna, and it represents on of the last and best conserved ancient lowland woods, which were typical of the Po valley and a memory of the forests on the Adriatic coast, which disappeared in the last century. It has a surface of 1,058 hectares and it is the wi...

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The Upper Murgia (“Alta Murgia”) National Park was established in 1998 to protect the last example of the Mediterranean steppe in Italy. The park stretches from the Adriatic coast to the Lucanian reliefs, reaching the maximum height of 2.227 ft on Mount Caccia; it is mainly made of limestone, tuffs, clay deposits, sands and alluvial deposits mixed...

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The Botanical Garden of Villa Beuca, on the western slope of Beuca hill, was built in 2002 by the Municipality of Cogoleto. Its aim is to safeguard the typical plant environments of Liguria. It extends over 8.4 acres divided into three main areas – an instructional one, an area for the spontaneous plant, and a typical Ligurian environment – in a re...

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