Tropical Botanical Garden
Behind the Jerónimos, seven hectares of tropical plants, the Calheta Palace and the 1940 exhibition pavilions, in a garden created in 1906.
Tropical Botanical Garden
The Tropical Botanical Garden covers some seven hectares behind the Jerónimos Monastery, five of them open to the public, with nearly six hundred species of tropical and subtropical plants. It was created by royal decree on 25 January 1906 as the Colonial Garden, in the Count of Farrobo's greenhouses in Sete Rios, and moved to Belém in 1912, to the grounds of the Palace of the Counts of Calheta, bought by King João V in 1726. The great iron greenhouse dates from 1914. In 1940 the garden hosted the Colonial Section of the Portuguese World Exhibition, of which the Colonial House, the former Tea House and the Raw Materials Pavilion survive – a past that included the display of people brought from the colonies, and which the garden itself now presents as troubling. It went through several names before becoming the Tropical Agricultural Garden-Museum in 1983, was classified as a National Monument in 2007 and has been part of the University of Lisbon since 2015, as a branch of the National Museum of Natural History and Science. Among its palms, greenhouses and pavilions, it is one of the quietest corners of Belém.
Located at: University of Lisbon
Address: Largo dos Jerónimos, 1, Lisboa
Opening hours: 10:00-17:00 October to March, 9:00-20:00 April to September (open every day; last entry half an hour before closing)
Phone: +351 213 921 808
Coordinates: 38.6981238, -9.2038688
Buses: 714, 727, 728, 751, 79B, 729
Tram: 15E
Train: Cascais Line, Belém Station
Boat: Belém River Station
Opened: 1906 (120 years)
