Orto Botanico Giardino dei Semplici - Università di Firenze

This guide to the Orto Botanico Giardino dei Semplici in Florence opens with Luca Ghini, a 16th-century doctor in Bologna who invented the herbarium, a way to press and dry plants so they could be studied out of season. You'll hear how the idea reached Cosimo I de' Medici, who opened this garden in 1545 to grow medicinal herbs, and about the sculptor Tribolo who laid out its original grid. Look for the centuries-old yew tree planted in 1720, still growing on that same ground.