Founded by Olof Rudbeck in 1655 and reshaped by Carl Linnaeus, Sweden’s oldest botanical garden is a reconstructed eighteenth-century teaching garden. Its formal beds, Orangery, and adjacent Linnaeus Museum reveal how plants were collected, classified, and kept through Uppsala’s winters.
Quick facts
Olof Rudbeck the Elder founded the garden in 1655 as a teaching garden for Uppsala University’s medical students.
Carl Linnaeus became director in 1741; the garden was reconstructed according to his 1745 plan and reopened to visitors in 1923.
The Orangery was built in the 1740s to overwinter plants in rooms with different temperature and humidity conditions.
Get directions to Linnaeus Garden (Linnéträdgården). Confirm the visitor entrance and current access with the venue before travelling.
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Guide
The Linnaeus Garden is a living reconstruction of an eighteenth-century scientific workplace, set inside central Uppsala. Its name points to Carl Linnaeus, but the garden began earlier: in 1655 the physician and professor Olof Rudbeck the Elder established Sweden’s first botanical garden here, near the Fyris River, to teach medical students about plants and medicinal herbs. The site links two generations of university botany, and the plan visitors encounter today is a carefully researched revival rather than an untouched survival.
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