Jardim Botânico de Lisboa: A Jungle Behind the Wall

Why is it significant?

Step through the gate beside the old Polytechnic School and the city noise drops away almost at once, replaced by birds and the dry rustle of palm fronds. In front of you the ground falls steeply, terrace after terrace, into a green valley that feels like it belongs on another continent.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step through the gate beside the old Polytechnic School and the city noise drops away almost at once, replaced by birds and the dry rustle of palm fronds. In front of you the ground falls steeply, terrace after terrace, into a green valley that feels like it belongs on another continent.

This is the Jardim Botânico de Lisboa, created from 1873 for the students of the Escola Politécnica, the school whose building you just passed. Two foreign gardeners shaped it: the German Edmond Goeze laid out the upper part, the Classe, where plants were arranged by family for teaching, and the Frenchman Jules Daveau planted the lower arboretum, the wild-looking slope below. Together they cover about four hectares, right in the middle of the city.

Walk down among the palms and you will find giants from everywhere: dragon trees from the Atlantic islands, fig trees with roots like melted wax, and one of the finest collections of cycads in Europe. Cycads are plants that were already old when dinosaurs walked past them... they look like palms, but they belong to a lineage around three hundred million years old. Lisbon's mild winters let them grow outdoors here, which is almost impossible elsewhere in Europe.

It is worth remembering where many of these plants came from. In the nineteenth century, a botanical garden in a colonial capital was also a tool of empire, a place to test crops from Africa, Brazil and Asia. And in March 1978 a fire swept through the old school building above, destroying much of the natural history collections kept there. The garden itself was classified as a national monument in 2010.

Find a bench under the canopy and just listen for a minute... you are a five-minute walk from one of Lisbon's busiest squares and you can hear water and birdsong. When you are ready, climb back up to the street and head downhill to the southwest, through narrow lanes, to a quiet square hidden in the valley below. If you have a few spare minutes, make the short detour east first to the garden of Príncipe Real, where a giant cypress, always called the great cedar, has been trained over an iron frame into a living roof.