Montjuïc Historic Sensorial Botanical Garden

About Historic Sensorial Botanical Garden

Barcelona's first botanical garden, Jardí Botànic Històric, was created in a dis-used Montjuïc quarry for the Barcelona 1929 World Exhibition.

Note: The historic botanical garden is a separate garden to the Montjuic (modern) Botanical garden.

Montjuïc Historic Botanical Garden History

The 1929 International Exposition provided an opportunity to integrate Mount Montjuic into Barcelona's urban fabric. The plan was to transform the mountain into a large urban park, the second in the city after Ciutadella Park.

As a consequence of having to quarry large amounts of stone to build the Palacio National for the Universal 1929 International Exposition a number of stone quarries were left over after construction was completed. One of these quarries was transformed into an outdoor Greek Theatre and these two quarries were transformed into Botanical Gardens.

As part of preparations for the Expo, Pius Font i Quer, a Catalan Botanist, was commissioned to build a botanical garden. In 1930, with more determination than money, Font i Quer began to assemble a remarkable collection of endemic and rare plants, mainly originating from the Iberian peninsula, the Balearic Islands and Morocco.

In 1940, Antonio de Bolòs y Vaireda, a Catalan Botanist, took over as director of the Botanical Garden, introducing new collections of plants from the Pyrenees and the Balearic Islands. In the same year, the Institute Botanic was transferred to the Garden. Thanks to the work of Font i Quer and the Municipal Board of Natural Sciences Museums, the Institute Botanic now boasted the most outstanding herbaria and the best specialist botanical library in Catalonia.

The Historic Botanical Garden was officially opened to the public on 17 July 1941. Despite all the difficulties encountered at the time, some of the rarest plants from North Africa and Spain were successfully grown there. Thanks to the efforts made by the Garden, the perennial Menorca Loosestrife (Lysimachus minoricensis) was saved from extinction. Now grown in many botanic gardens, this species was reintroduced to natural habitats in 1954, the year that Antonio de Bolòs began and announced the first replanting in the Iberian peninsula of a species that was extinct in its natural habitat.

In 1986, the need to construct an access route to the new Montjuïc Olympic facilities seriously affected the stability of the vertical walls, and the Garden was closed. Later, restoration and consolidation works were carried out and garden was re-opened to the public in October 2003.

Since November 2004, Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) has managed maintenance of the whole site.

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