Jardim Botânico da Ajuda

The oldest botanical garden of Portugal, in the Ajuda quarter of Lisbon.

The Jardim Botânico da Ajuda, in Lisbon, is the oldest botanical garden of Portugal: a terraced garden of the eighteenth century, laid out beside the royal palace, where the collections of plants from the corners of the Portuguese empire were first studied and kept. Between its box hedges, its fountain and its old trees, the garden is a green room of history in the west of the city.

The garden

The garden was created in the age of the Marquis of Pombal, in the second half of the eighteenth century, to teach botany and to receive the plants that arrived from Brazil, Africa and Asia. Its design in terraces, with the great fountain and the rows of box and myrtle, follows the style of the European botanical gardens of the Enlightenment, and its trees — some of them among the oldest of Lisbon — still frame the paths of the garden.

What to see

The terraces and the fountain of the eighteenth-century design.
The old trees and the collections of exotic plants.
The views over the river, from the upper terraces.
The calm of the garden, beside the Ajuda palace and its neighbourhood.

Visiting

The garden is in the Ajuda quarter, in the west of Lisbon, reached by tram and by bus from the centre. It is a place of study as well as a garden — the conditions and opening times follow the official information of the entity that manages it — and the visit combines well with the other gardens and museums of Belém and Ajuda.