Ogród Botaniczny Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków

The Jagiellonian University Botanic Garden is Poland’s oldest surviving botanical garden, founded in 1783 on Kraków’s Kopernika Street. Its 9.6-hectare grounds combine historic scientific work with greenhouses, an exceptional orchid collection and the long-lived Jagiellonian Oak. A meteorological station here has recorded observations continuously since 1825.

Beyond the gates lies the Jagiellonian University Botanic Garden, a living collection spread across 9.6 hectares on Kopernika Street. Founded in 1783, it is Poland’s oldest surviving botanical garden. It began because the university had taught botany to medical students since the late sixteenth century but lacked a garden for practical study.

This ground had previously belonged to the Czartoryski family and was later acquired by the Jesuits. After their order was dissolved, the national education authorities turned the site into a teaching garden for chemistry and natural history. Its first layout was a formal French Baroque garden, with medicinal and decorative plants; the first greenhouse followed in 1787.

Among the glasshouses, the low Dutch greenhouse holds orchid collections. They grew from the travels of botanist Józef Warszewicz in Central and South America, and now form Poland’s oldest and largest orchid collection, with roughly 500 species. Elsewhere, the arboretum contains the Jagiellonian Oak, an English oak about 230 years old.

The garden is also a scientific archive: its meteorological station dates to 1792 and has kept an unbroken run of measurements since 1825. Since 1976, this whole garden has been protected as a historic monument of nature, science, gardening, art and culture.