The Giardino dei Patriarchi is located next to the Villa dei Quintili on the Via Appia Antica in Rome. This new garden was created with cuttings from the oldest fruit trees in the entire country.
Giardino dei Patriarchi Rome
Useful information
The address of the Giardino dei Patriarchi is Via Appia Nuova, 1092 (Zona: Capannelle). The opening hours and entrance fees of the Villa dei Quintili are valid for the garden as well.
History and description
The “Garden of the Patriarchs” (officially the Giardino dei Patriarchi dell’Unità d’Italia) opened on September 27, 2013 and is intended to grow there twins of Italy’s most famous monumental trees. For this purpose, a branch was taken for each region from the tree that best typifies that region.
The cuttings were donated by the Associazione Nazionale Patriarchi d’Italia, which has created a nursery in Forlì with more than ten thousand plants and trees from all over Italy.
What to see
From San Remo, a branch was used from the more than 1,000-year-old olive tree, which stands near the coast and serves as a kind of natural lighthouse for sailors.
Another olive tree comes from Luras in Sardinia and is 3,800 years old. The trunk of this tree, called S’ozzastru by the locals, has a circumference of about 13 meters.
The apple tree from Fondo in Trento Alto-Adige is the oldest in the country.
A wild cherry tree was chosen from Besana in Brianza (Lombardy region).
Sicily is represented with a Corinto bianco, an extremely rare species of grape plant imported by the Greeks two thousand years ago and said to be an aphrodisiac.
The Lazio region itself is represented by the pomegranate bush located near the San Giovanni in Laterano Basilica.