The Botanical Garden in Palermo: an idea to spend a day with your children

If you chose Palermo as a destination for a holiday with your children, then you have to know that the Sicilian capital reserves so much to see and so many activities to do with children. In particular, there is a place to spend a wonderful day learning how nature can be spectacular: we are talking about the Botanical Garden of Palermo.

The Botanical Garden

The Botanical Garden, which contains more than 12 thousand different species of plants and dates from 1779, is divided into several sections. Of these, the most significant are:

• Linnaean system. This is the oldest part of the Garden. It is divided into four parallelogram sectors, generally called Quartini, each of which is divided into different flower beds.
• Gymnasium, Calidarium and Tepidarium. They are located near the entrance gate. In particular, Calidarium and Tepidarium contained plants of tropical and temperate climates.
• Aquarium. This large circular basin, divided into 24 sectors, houses many aquatic species.
• Greenhouses. Over the centuries, the Botanical Garden of Palermo was enriched with several greenhouses. The most important and, in some ways, striking, is the greenhouse Maria Carolina, also known as the Winter Garden.
• Mediterraneum Herbarium. Placed in a complex of buildings located next to the Botanical Garden, the main plant collections are located into Sicilian herbarium and in the General botanical herbarium of the Botanical department.

Where it is located

The Botanical Garden is located in Lincoln street, in a central area of ​​Palermo and at a short distance from the port of Palermo (one of the major ports where the ferries to Sicily arrive). It can be

Opening time

With the exception of Christmas day and New Year’s day, the Botanical Garden opens every day at 9am. The closing time may vary depending on the period of the year:

• at 5pm from November to February;
• at 8pm from May to August;
• at 6pm in the months of March and October;
• at 7pm in the months of April and September.

More information

For more information about Botanical Garden of Palermo (tickets price, events, guided tours), you may visit the official website Ortobotanico.unipa.it.

Image source: Di tato grasso – Opera propria, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=568657