Greenhouses of the University of Ferrara Botanic Garden (Orto botanico)

The University of Ferrara's Orto botanico was officially established in 1771, when new reforming statutes, in the wake of the reforms of Clement XIV and then Pius VI, allowed the university to open a garden of simples. It was first laid out in the gardens of via Paradiso, beside the Palazzo Paradiso, then the seat of the university. A catalogue published in 1772 under the prefect Francesco Maria Giacomini listed 2,800 native and exotic taxa. The garden's most brilliant period began in the early 19th century under Antonio Campana: according to the bulletin written in 2021 by the garden's current prefect, the collections grew from a few hundred to more than 5,000 plants, and Campana introduced stove-heated greenhouses, known as tepidari, to Ferrara.

The 20th century was harder. The garden was moved to via Scandiana, a site judged unsuitable (the 2021 bulletin places it near the Palazzo Schifanoia and records the loss of most of the collections), and returned to its original site in 1925. In 1962-1963 it settled for good in the park of the 16th-century Palazzo Turchi-Di Bagno, where it was re-laid out; the regional landscape atlas notes that the park began as the palace's own garden and has served as the botanic garden since the 1960s. For the institution's 250th anniversary, a stamp issued on 6 September 2021 shows a detail of the tropical hot greenhouse.

The greenhouses stand on the eastern side of the garden. According to the official plan, the largest consists of a big unheated central room, the cold house, and two lateral rooms serving as a temperate house and a hot house; the plan's legend also distinguishes a nursery greenhouse, a succulent house, a heating plant and the gardeners' workshop. The 2021 bulletin speaks of five greenhouses (cold, temperate, tropical, succulents and carnivorous plants), while Italian Wikipedia and a museum record count three covering 243 m².

The detailed OpenStreetMap survey, whose names follow the official legend, describes the cold house as a glass building about 6 m high with a hipped roof, and the hot house and the nursery house as volumes about 4 m high with a single-pitch glass roof. A photograph published on Wikimedia Commons shows large glazed panels on a metal frame under a hipped roof.

According to the garden's official plan, the greenhouses hold about a thousand species from mainly tropical and subtropical regions; Italian Wikipedia and the museum record cite 1,300. Tender plants spend the winter there, from November to March; from April to October many are moved outside to form the exotic-plants section of the garden.

The 2021 bulletin reports three plants more than 150 years old in the cold house, brought from the historic Palazzo Paradiso site: a Cycas revoluta, a Howea forsteriana and a Livistona chinensis (spelled "Livingstona" in the source). The 2021 stamp illustrates a detail of the tropical hot house.

The main entrance to the garden is at Corso Porta Mare 2B; the greenhouses occupy its eastern side, according to the official plan. In spring and summer the public may enter two greenhouses, the large cold house and the succulent house; the university's website also has a section on guided visits. Because the greenhouse plants go outdoors in the warm season, April to October is the richest period for the exotic-plants section.

The garden's beds cover 4,500 m² and are followed along a long winding path.