Orto Botanico di Lucca

This guide to the Orto Botanico di Lucca traces the garden back to 1821, when workers dug into an old military rampart to build the walls and artificial hill of a garden that Duchess Maria Luisa di Borbone had decreed but young botanist Paolo Volpi still had to construct. You'll hear about the cedar of Lebanon he planted that year, now grown into a monumental tree, and the heated greenhouse added in 1826 that let Lucca grow tropical plants far from their native climate. Stand by the pond, later widened under director Cesare Bicchi, to take in two centuries of quiet engineering.