Winter Gardens

The Winter Gardens, located in Via Ludovico Winter, take their name from the German landscape designer who, in 1875, transformed Bordighera into an important international botanical centre.

Here Ludwig Winter acclimatised and cultivated numerous exotic species, especially palm trees from different parts of the world, experimenting with cultivation and hybridisation techniques that helped make the town famous between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The garden, also conceived as a botanical nursery, hosted more than sixty varieties of palm trees together with agaves, ficus trees and other rare species, in a landscape that attracted scholars, travellers and botany enthusiasts.

After a long period of neglect, the Winter Gardens were restored and reopened to the public, giving the city back one of the places most representative of its history linked to landscape design and botanical acclimatisation.

Today the garden preserves lush and monumental vegetation, offering a route through nature, memory and atmospheres that reflect Bordighera’s international vocation.