With 1300 plant species, the Botanical Garden mirrors the history of the Portuguese colonization in its plants from Africa, Brazil and Asia.
The writer, Thomas Mann, also fell in love with the garden: “Your first visit in Lisbon must be to the Botanical Garden on the western heights. There is nothing like it in all Europe, thanks to a climate in which a tropical flora flourishes side by side with that of the temperate zone. The gardens are crowded with araucaria, bamboo, papyrus, yucca and every kind of palm tree. That’s more than short-winded cultural history. That is geological time, it is the antiquity of the earth in its entirety.”
Located in the downtown neighbourhood, Principe Real, it makes for a wonderful spot to wind down from the city buzz.
