Historic Botanical Garden of Athens, Greece

Botanists of the Haseki Estate or Votanikos

Jun 23, 2009

In the 1830s the property of the Athens Ottoman ruler, Hadji Ali Haseki was transformed into a Botanical Garden by Queen Amalia's architect and botanists.

The first Botanical Garden of Greece was established in 1838 in the estate of the former Ottoman Athens voivode, the infamous Hadji Ali Haseki. It was one of the green urban projects of keen horticulturist, Queen Amalia, and was designed similarly to her Royal Garden as a romantic park with circular outlines and picturesque structures.

Hadji Ali Haseki and Haseki Estate

When the tyrannical Hadji Ali Haseki was finally banished by the liberal Sultan Selim III in 1792, he left behind a 120-square-metre estate, a fortified wall, so-called Serpentzes, he had built to protect Athens from Muslim Albanian raids, his konak, or official residence, and a fountain – the only Ottoman fountain surviving in Athens today.

True to romantic antiquarianism, Queen Amalia chose to preserve Haseki’s house, the fortification wall and the fountain, incorporating them within the plants and parterres and enriching them with the addition of further structures. The Botanical Garden that Queen Amalia and her team of architects and botanists created was called by the Athenians the Haseki estate.

Botanists of the Athens Botanical Garden

Famous names involved in the Botanical Garden, or Votanikos, were the Dresden-born botanist, Theodor von Heldreich (1822-1902), the leading Danish architect Hans Christian Hansen (1803-1883), and the Bavarian plant collector and eventually Professor of Botany in the University of Athens, Carl Nikolaus Fraas.

Carl Nikolaus Fraas

An avid plant collector, Fraas travelled widely in Greece to study the flora and soil conditions, married Queen Amalia’s lady-in-waiting, was appointed ephore of all royal gardens and assigned with the task of laying out the botanical garden. During his time in the Votanikos, thousands of olive trees were transplanted from the nearby Olive Grove and some 15,000 plants, including date palms and vines, were imported from Genoa, Rhine Palatinate and the model farm at Tiryns. Fraas left Greece in 1841 due to malaria.

Theodor von Heldreich

Theodor von Heldreich conducted several botanical expeditions in Mediterranean countries between 1843 and 1848 before settling permanently in Greece in 1851. He was reportedly already appointed chairman of the Haseki Estate in 1838 which operated then as a Tree Nursery. He later (1851) reorganised the Botanical Garden together with Professor Th. Orphanides.

During his time the Garden was enriched with some 2,500 plants from Greece and abroad and two greenhouses were constructed. Heldreich was reportedly a friend of Charles Darwin. He became a tutor of natural history to the children of King George I from 1880 to 1883. Part of his collection of Grecian plants is part of the Natural History departments’ collection of the British Museum.

Hans Christian Hansen

The stone cistern – aqueduct, next to the first iron greenhouse in Greece, built in Votanikos, is the work of Hans Christian Hansen, the distinguished Danish architect whose most famous work is the University of Athens (built in 1850).

The Botanical Garden in the 19th century and its Plants

In 1867 the Botanical Garden became part of the University of Athens and two years later Professor Theodoros Orphanides was appointed ephore. In 1871, a glass heated greenhouse was built. The Agricultural Station was founded in 1888 in the Botanical Garden and it eventually became the Higher Agricultural School of Athens in 1920 (today Agricultural University).

A palm tree line, reminding of the one in the former Royal and today National Garden in Athens and many very old cypresses are some of the plants that remain from the first Botanical Garden of Greece. There is a very well researched article (in Greek with an English abstract) on the Haseki Estate and the remaining structures in it by Chronopoulos, Papageorgiou-Venetas et al with very interesting photographs, historic sketches and drawings.

N. Charkiolakis, M. Mikelakis, M. Psallida, "Historical Preview of the Recreational Parks and Botanical Gardens of Athens, Greece", WSEAS Transactions on Environment and Development, issue 11, vol. 4, November 2008.

Ioannis Chronopoulos, Alexandros Papageorgiou-Venetas et al, “The Haseki farm and the old buildings in the Agricultural School of Athens”, Archaeologia online, issue 69, Dec. 1998 in www.arxaiologia.gr (in Greek)

David Watkin, A History of Western Architecture, Laurence King Publishing, 2005

Leonidas Kallivretakis, “Athens in the 19th century: From regional town of the Ottoman Empire to capital of the Kingdom of Greece” in Archaeology of the City of Athens, in www.eie.gr/archaeologia

A.Yannitsaros, “The Botanical Garden of the University of Athens” in www. kapodistriako.uoa.gr/stories (in Greek)

On Hansen: “Architecture”, January 2008, in www.netpublicationer.dk and Britannica

The copyright of the article Historic Botanical Garden of Athens, Greece in Greek History is owned by Lito Apostolakou. Permission to republish Historic Botanical Garden of Athens, Greece in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.