The botanical garden in Brera

The botanical garden in Brera is a miracle of greenery amid the buildings of Milan, with 300 different species and five thousand square metres! It dates from the end of the 18th century and it has a very special atmosphere.

For anyone wanting to learn more about art through botany, there is an interesting little learning-through-play booklet: “Arte e Orto” (Art and Garden) It incorporates everything there is in Brera’s picture gallery!

 

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Video full text: The botanical garden in Brera

Brera’s picture gallery was established in 1773,
when the Jesuits were evicted by Maria Theresa of Austria,
who wanted to give the scholars additional space.
She found it here, in a place that had, until shortly before, belonged to the Jesuits.
Influenced by the French Enlightenment, Maria Theresa
maintained that a great empire, such as that of the Habsburgs,
had to put into practise important cultural projects.
In Lombardy she reformed education,
and in Milan, in addition to creating La Scala Theatre,
she created the Academy of the Arts and the picture gallery in Brera.
But what interests me is what there is behind all of this:
at the back of Brera there is a botanical garden!
The word Brera, or breida in old Milanese, is supposed to mean fallow land.
All of this was outside of Milan,
and until the 12th century this area was right in the middle of the little-cultivated countryside.
In the 16th century the Jesuits transformed the 14th century convent into a place of learning.
Finally, in the 18th century, the Austrians planted this garden,
Maria Theresa, naturally.
Brera’s botanical garden, with its 300 different species and five thousand square metres,
is a miracle of greenery amid the buildings of Milan.
It’s one of Milan’s most interesting places,
even from the point of view of gardening techniques.
Not simply because it is a botanical garden that dates from the end of the 18th century.
This garden has a very special atmosphere.
The garden was designed by Fulgenzio Vitman, with an educational purpose in mind,
and the project includes two tanks for collecting water.
The water came from the Navigli and the canals of the Martesana,
Milan’s water system, designed centuries before by Leonardo da Vinci.
At the peak of the age of enlightenment, at the same time as the botanical garden,
the Habsburgs decided they also wanted to build an astronomical observatory.
And so, in the second half of the 18th century, Brera was to become
a point of reference for artists and scientists.
This shower of leaves falls onto the heads of the students of Brera,
who are at this moment studying… a magical moment!
If I’m not mistaken I see a persimmon tree over there,
it looks like a tree from a fairy tale!
It’s more than likely that the tree of Eden was not an apple but a persimmon tree.
For anyone wanting to learn more about art through botany,
there is an interesting little learning-through-play booklet: “Arte e Orto” (Art and Garden)
It incorporates everything there is in Brera’s picture gallery,
for example, this beautiful picture by Simone Peterzano,
that also depicts a pomegranate, with a real pomegranate,
that can be found in the botanical garden.
There’s another plant, painted by none other than Raphael, in the Marriage of the Virgin.
Saint Joseph, who is a guest at the wedding, is holding an oleander flower in his hand.
In The Resurrection of Christ, by Giovanni Cariani, that is on display in Brera, we see an olive tree and here it is!
Inside the botanical garden there is a hyper-technology path, created for the visually impaired.
Microchips have been placed under the ground and the stick acts as a sort of antenna,
picking up the messages from the microchip and sending them to a smartphone.
The visually impaired person can listen to the message.
That’s really hi-tech!
And it’s not just useful for the visually impaired, naturally.
Rather than seeing the trunk of the Virginia persimmon, it is possible to feel it.
You can touch the exterior, that is made up of coarse, square-shaped scales that look a bit like tiny squares of chocolate.
This is the first time that I have caressed aromatic leaves with my eyes shut,
and smelled the aromas of exotic plants.
the Japanese sage has very large aromatic leaves.
It is fantastic to touch.
the cotton plant has palmate leaves with three or five lobes
How lovely, it’s already like this! Ready for use.
Here I am, standing under two Ginkgo bilobas, trees that are the symbol of Brera’s botanical garden.
the ginko has remained virtually unchanged for more than 200 million years,
which is why it is referred to as a living fossil.
The leaves of the ginkgo biloba are beautiful and fan-shaped.
They turn yellow in autumn.
It is the oldest tree in the world, and it was around the time of the dinosaurs.
These two trees here are two hundred years old,
one is male and the other female.
This tree is also the symbol of the vegetable plot-garden.
A place that is hidden away, but not that much.
Let’s try and keep it as hidden away as possible,
don’t tell anyone!