Scopoli Greenhouses, Pavia Botanical Garden (Serre Scopoliane)

Pavia's botanical garden descends from the university's older garden of simples. As part of the reform of the university desired by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, it was moved between 1772 and 1774 to its present site, the former rectory of Sant'Epifanio; work on the garden began in 1773 and was completed in 1775, and Fulgenzio Vitman is credited with founding the garden.

In 1776 Valentino Brusati started the construction of large wooden glasshouses to a design by the architect Giuseppe Piermarini, later modified by Leopoldo Pollack. They now bear the name of Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, the physician and botanist who taught at Pavia from 1777 to 1788 and regularised the layout of the garden. Domenico Nocca, director until 1826, rebuilt the glasshouses and added covered beds known as pulvilli; Luigi Canonica replaced the originally glazed eastern part with a stone-and-iron construction in the early nineteenth century.

From 1882 Giovanni Briosi reorganised the collections by geographical and climatic zones and had further houses built for exotic and tropical plants; the Briosi cold house, built between 1883 and 1919, was later restored by Ruggero Tomaselli. Tomaselli, director from 1964 to 1982, had the tropical house built in 1974. The garden joined the university's museum system in 2017.

The Scopoli glasshouses consist of two rectilinear wings joined at the centre by a central body. The original covering was of timber, with large glazed panes set at an angle and facing south. The initial design is attributed to Giuseppe Piermarini, the architect of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and was later modified by Leopoldo Pollack.

The early nineteenth century brought a change of materials: Luigi Canonica altered the eastern wing, replacing the original glazing with a stone-and-iron structure. Only the western side still has its original panes. A plaque at the entrance carries a fragment of Lorenzo Mascheroni's Arcadian poem Invito a Lesbia Cidonia. English Wikipedia gives dimensions of 171 by 23 feet for the building, roughly 52 by 7 metres; this figure was not confirmed by a second source.

Beside this historic block the garden has the Briosi cold house, a nineteenth-century structure, and the Tomaselli tropical house of 1974, a modern glass-and-metal building whose perimeter beds surround a long central bed flanked by two pools, whose evaporation keeps the air humid.

The eastern wing of the Scopoli glasshouses holds the cycads, a collection reorganised in the 1970s; the western wing is devoted to succulents. According to English Wikipedia, the succulent collection exceeds 500 species, with rare cacti and specimens of Welwitschia mirabilis, the desert plant of Namibia.

The Briosi cold house shows plants of Mediterranean climate, aromatic, fruit-bearing, timber-yielding and ornamental species. The 1974 tropical house reproduces a hot, humid tropical climate and includes palms, aroids, euphorbs, lilies and marantas, together with ferns. A small glass-and-metal house built around the 1970s on the south side of the main building, first meant for American bromeliads, now shelters tropical orchids (Paphiopedilum, Phalaenopsis, Vanda, Vanilla and other genera).

Outdoors, the garden has grown the Pavia tea (Camellia sinensis 'Ticinensis') since 1920, according to English Wikipedia.

The garden lies in the centre of Pavia, on Via Sant'Epifanio, and covers about two hectares with some 2,000 species. The Scopoli glasshouses are visited together with the outdoor route, which includes a rose garden, medicinal plants, peat-bog plants and Mediterranean collections.

Allow about an hour for the garden and its three or four glasshouses, longer to linger over the cycads and succulents. The Tomaselli tropical house and the small orchid house round off the visit and can be enjoyed outside the growing season, whereas the outdoor beds are best seen in spring and summer. Since 2017 the garden has belonged to the University of Pavia museum system, which invites pairing it with the university's other collections in the city.