For this event, we are offering a guided tour of the Tropical Botanical Garden, one of our city's magnificent green spaces. After the tour, we invite the whole group to take a photo walk around some of the beautiful gardens and green spaces in the Belém area.

The Tropical Botanical Garden:

The Tropical Botanical Garden (JBT) is located in Lisbon's monumental Belém neighbourhood, next to the Jerónimos Monastery. The Botanical Garden specialises in tropical and subtropical flora, including more than 500 species from different continents. It occupies an area of around 7 hectares, comprising a Botanical Garden of around 5 ha, which includes a heated greenhouse and other shelters of various kinds (IICT, 1983).

The Jardim Museu Agrícola Tropical (JMAT) was created on 25 January 1906 by Royal Decree, as part of the organisation of colonial agricultural services and Colonial Agronomic Education at the Agronomy and Veterinary Institute, and was then called the Colonial Garden.

This garden, with a strong didactic vocation, is considered an "indispensable basis for teaching" because "the living specimen is indispensable for the demonstration to be rigorously scientific and educational, so that the pupil doesn't just imagine what animals and vegetation are like, but has a living idea of the reality".

However, from its earliest days, the Colonial Garden was also seen as a centre for studying and experimenting with crops, as a space for collecting information on colonial agriculture, as a centre for promoting relations with similar institutions (particularly with a view to exchanging plant material) and as a fundamental centre for answering technical questions.

The basis for the organisation of the colonial agricultural services, approved and published with the aforementioned Decree, also established that the tropical agricultural teaching facility included a "laboratory" and a "museum" and that the Director of the Garden would be the teacher of the subject of Economic Geography and Colonial Cultures.

This situation continued until 1944, when the Colonial Garden merged with the Colonial Agricultural Museum to form the Colonial Agricultural Garden and Museum. The Garden thus ceased to be under the pedagogical supervision of the Instituto Superior de Agronomia and its Director was no longer a lecturer at the Institute. The name changed in 1951 to Jardim e Museu Agrícola do Ultramar (Overseas Agricultural Garden and Museum), and in 1974 it became part of the Junta de Investigações do Ultramar (Overseas Research Board), now the Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (Tropical Scientific Research Institute). In 1983, the Garden adopted its current name of Jardim-Museu Agrícola Tropical (JMAT).

Initially housed in the Estufas do Conde de Farrôbo and its adjoining grounds, the Garden was transferred in 1912 to the "Cêrca do Palácio de Belém", where it still stands today.

In addition to the natural heritage, there is a built heritage that encompasses different aesthetics (from the 16th to the 20th century) and different architectural and historical values. Of particular note are the Palácio dos Condes da Calheta, the Casa da Direcção and the Casa do Veado, as well as the Estufa Grande, in iron architecture from the early 20th century. In addition to this heritage, the statuary in the Garden is also noteworthy.

- Guided Tour of the Tropical Botanical Garden - Belém Gardens - Monument to the Discoveries - Belém Tower - Brás de Albuquerque Garden - Jerónimos Monastery -