May 22 – New York inaugurated a major exhibition entitled “Wild Medicine Healing Plants Around the World, Featuring the Italian Renaissance Garden” in the New York Botanical Garden, a prestigious cultural institution in the Bronx. The exhibition, which promises to be one of the most significant cultural events of the season, is dedicated to medicinal plants and it features ancient teaching catalogs of medical herbs rarely displayed to the public, another section illustrating their application and, finally, a third part reconstructs for the visitor the Botanical Garden of Padua, the oldest herbal garden in the world. In fact, New York’s Botanical Garden is directly inspired by the Royal Botanical Garden in London, which was in turn designed according to the basic elements of the Padua Garden. The centuries old bond between the University of Padua and the city’s botanical culture was underlined by the Venetian Dean of the University, upon his visit to the New York exhibition and participation in a conference, organized by the Italian Cultural Institute, dedicated to the origins Botanical gardens in the Italian Renaissance.
