In the middle of a beech wood, up above are snowy peaks, down below the solemn profile of the famous sanctuary in this garden that has collected a selection of alpine flowers from all over the world, with a special focus on endemisms from the mountains around Biella.

First conceived in the 1930s, the botanical garden of Oropa was not actually established until 1990 by the Garden Club of Biella. Designed in collaboration with the Turin Museo di Scienze Naturali, the garden exists to raise awareness about biodiversity, particularly in the mountains. The garden’s single largest section is planted as beech forest, with spontaneous flora such as the Solomon’s Seal, false lily of the valley, luzulaand the martagon lily. Other sections display high-altitude flora (able to survive frost and wind), megaphorbs (grasses found preferably on northern slopes, sometimes used to produce liquours), mosses and sphagnum mosses, ferns, and wetland (around the natural pond). Exotic ornamental flora from Tibet and the Himalayas are hosted in some parts of the garden. Educational trails provide information about food plants; kids can look forward to a special trail (Giardin Giocando) to learn about the typical fauna at the Oropa Reserve. The whole site and its botanical characteristics have become the stuff of history: the Flora Montis Oropae herbarium, collected by Oreste Mattirolo, Enrico Ferrari, Pietro Fontana, Giovanni Negri at the Botanical Garden of Turin, celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 2020.

Highlights