Tropical Botanical Garden (formerly the Colonial Garden)

The garden was created by a decree of 25 January 1906, under the name of Colonial Garden, to serve colonial agronomy teaching: future agronomists “who wish to serve overseas” were to see the plants of the colonies growing. In 1912 it moved here, to the former walled grounds of the Palácio de Belém.¹² The Palácio dos Condes da Calheta, at the top of the garden, housed the Colonial Agricultural Museum, opened to the public in 1929.²

In 1940 the garden and the museum became the Colonial Section of the Exhibition of the Portuguese World, which opened on 27 June and was directed by Captain Henrique Galvão. Among pavilions of the colonies, “typical” streets of India and Macau and replica villages, 138 men, women and children recruited in the colonies lived in full view of the public — a “human zoo”, writes the historian Cláudia Castelo.² The Bijagós from Guinea were put on the island in one of the lakes, “for the delight of visitors”, as the garden’s museum says today.¹ Teams of scientists measured them every day, in anthropometric studies; in October the exhibition’s executive committee decided to send them back before the winter, citing health reasons.²

After the exhibition the garden and the museum stayed closed for almost eight years; in 1944 they were merged as the Colonial Agricultural Garden and Museum, which in 1951 became the Overseas (“do Ultramar”) Agricultural Garden and Museum and in 1983, after independence, the Tropical Agricultural Garden-Museum. It has been a National Monument since 2007 and part of the University of Lisbon since 2015.²¹ In 2021 Cláudia Castelo noted that neither the entrance nor the information panels explained the garden’s connection with the empire and the 1940 exhibition.²

From the exhibition there remain the Colonial House, with tile panels (azulejos) on colonial themes, the former Colonial Restaurant, now a tea room, the Raw Materials Pavilion and fourteen busts of African and Asian “types”, by the sculptor Manuel de Oliveira. The museum says it is giving new meaning to this heritage, in collaboration with the communities of origin.¹