Botanical garden in Klagenfurt, Botanical garden at Kreuzberg, Klagenfurt, Austria
The Botanical Garden in Klagenfurt is a roughly 1.2 hectare site located in a former quarry. The grounds are divided into specialized areas, including alpine plants, wetland species, and medicinal herbs.
The Carinthian State Museum was commissioned to create a botanical garden on 22 April 1862; it was first laid out in the former cemetery garden of the Bürgerspital. Destroyed in a World War II bombing raid, the garden's remains were moved to an abandoned quarry at the foot of the Kreuzbergl. Reconstruction began in 1958 and ended with the opening of the Botanical Centre in June 1965.
The garden is named after the Kreuzbergl, the hill at whose foot it lies in a former quarry. Since 1965 the Carinthian Botanical Center has published the journal Wulfenia, named after the Carinthian Wulfenia, a plant native to the region that is a focus of the garden's collections. Weekly botany lectures are held from May to September.
The garden lies in an abandoned quarry at the foot of the Kreuzbergl and is open to the public as a local recreation area. From May to September the Botanical Centre holds weekly lectures on botanical topics. Until 2015 a path from the site led to the Klagenfurt mining museum, used as an air-raid shelter in the Second World War and since closed for economic reasons.
The garden's oldest holding is the Herbarium Vivum, a collection of dried plants dated 1752, kept in the Botanical Centre building on the site. The centre also maintains over 8,200 fossil plant specimens, mostly from Carinthia, and exchanges seeds with more than 360 gardens worldwide.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 94,441 contributors worldwide.