The Tropical Botanical Garden is located in Lisbon, in the monumental area of Belém, next to the Jerónimos Monastery. It occupies a total area of about 7 hectares, comprising a public park with 5 hectares. With a plant heritage specializing in tropical flora, the garden is classified as a National Monument.

Since 2015, the Tropical Botanical Garden has been part of the University of Lisbon and is currently managed in conjunction with the Museum of Natural History and Science and the Lisbon Botanical Garden and has developed scientific, educational, cultural and leisure activities within the scope of the preservation and enhancement of heritage and the dissemination of scientific culture on tropical science and the history and memory of science and technique in Portuguese discoveries, expansion and colonization.

 

Originally installed in the Conde de Farrôbo Greenhouses and their adjoining land, the Garden was transferred in 1912 to the “Belém Palace Palace”, where it still stands today.

This Garden, with a strong didactic vocation, was considered “indispensable basis for teaching” because it is “indispensable the living exemplar for the demonstration to be rigorously scientific and educational, so that the alumno does not only imagine what the animals and the vegetation are like, but have the living notion of reality. ”

Since its inception, the Colonial Garden has also been understood as a center for crop study and experimentation, as a space for collecting information on colonial agriculture, as a center for fostering relations with similar institutions (in particular for the exchange of plant material). and as a fundamental center for the answer to technical questions.

On the basis for the organization of colonial agricultural services, approved and published with the above Decree, it was further established that the installation of tropical agricultural education included a "laboratory" and a "museum" and that the Director of the Garden would be the teacher of discipline of economic geography and colonial cultures.

 

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