Greenhouses of the University of Turin Botanical Garden (Orto Botanico)

Turin's Orto Botanico was established in 1729 alongside the university's chair of botany; it was already working that year near the Valentino castle, as flowerbeds enclosed by high walls. The Italian Ministry of Culture credits its foundation to King Victor Amadeus II and states that the garden has belonged to the university since 1730. Under French rule the director Balbis gave it fresh impetus.

In the early nineteenth century a palazzina was built to house the orangery, the hothouse and the herbarium museum; MuseoTorino dates this orangery-greenhouse to the 1820s and records a new greenhouse built between 1835 and 1839. Land donated in 1825 and a new layout of the beds in 1831 went with this expansion, and by the middle of the century more than 12,000 species were in cultivation. The so-called Dutch-style greenhouse, dated 1843, is the oldest one still standing.

From 1881 the creation of a great hall, laboratories and a larger herbarium room led to the removal of the greenhouses in the central part of the building, and further cuts followed in 1929 to make room for classrooms. The bombing raids of 13 July and 8 November 1943 brought down roofs and destroyed the iron-and-glass greenhouses. In 1969 the orangery was replaced by a greenhouse for tropical plants, and a succulent house followed in 1986. Reopened to the public in 1997 as a living museum, the garden restored the Dutch greenhouse in 1999 and in 2007 opened a large glasshouse in place of an obsolete one.

The palazzina originally brought together the orangery, the hothouse and the herbarium museum in a single building; from 1881 the greenhouses in its central part were dismantled to make way for a great hall, laboratories and a larger herbarium room.

The Dutch-style greenhouse of 1843 preserves the horticultural techniques of its time: it was fitted with heating, hotbeds and a reservoir tank used to water small heat-loving species. The garden also keeps its svernatoie, overwintering frames made of Luserna stone slabs joined by dovetailed iron cramps and closed by movable iron-and-glass lids, under which alpine species were sheltered during cold spells.

The twentieth- and twenty-first-century houses answer other needs: a semi-sunken tropical house, the succulent house of 1986 and the large glasshouse of 2007, laid out to evoke several South African habitats. In 2024 a violent hailstorm damaged the glass roofs of the tropical and succulent houses.

According to the Italian botanic gardens portal, the succulent house holds about 500 species from several continents, chiefly Cactaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Aizoaceae, Compositae and Liliaceae, while the semi-sunken tropical house has some 380 species, dominated by Orchidaceae and Bromeliaceae. A collection of about sixty species of the genera Aloe and Agave completes the set.

The 2007 glasshouse displays around 500 species arranged in four South African settings, the Tsitsikamma forest, the fynbos, the Richtersveld and the Karoo, a country with many biodiversity hotspots. The Dutch greenhouse is devoted to plants of humid tropical forests, orchids in particular. Outdoors, the Alpineto gathers about 250 mountain and alpine species and the Boschetto some 300 species of trees and shrubs.

The garden covers about three hectares at Viale Mattioli 25, next to the Valentino castle, and opens to the public seasonally; dates are best checked with the university. In autumn 2025 the tropical and succulent houses could not be visited because of hail damage, while the South Africa house remained open. Allow about an hour for the South African glasshouse, the Alpineto and the Boschetto, laid out in 1840 in the manner of an English garden. As it approaches its tercentenary in 2029, the garden is carrying out further improvements for visitors.