History
The Radicepura Horticultural Park was born from the Faro family's desire to enhance and share a botanical collection built over more than fifty years of research and work. Today it stands as a benchmark for the protection of Mediterranean and subtropical biodiversity, as well as a cultural center devoted to landscape studies.
Since 2017, it has hosted the Radicepura Garden Festival, the first international event dedicated to the Mediterranean landscape, bringing together landscape designers, architects, designers, artists, and scholars. Each edition enriches the park with permanent installations and signature gardens, making it a place of creative exchange between botany, art, and landscape architecture. Visitors encounter gardens designed by François Abelanet, Sarah Eberle, Paolo Pejrone, Michel Péna, Antonio Perazzi, and Andy Sturgeon, in dialogue with works by contemporary artists such as Emilio Isgrò, Alfio Bonanno, Adrian Paci, and Francesco Lauretta.
At the foot of Mount Etna, on exceptionally fertile soil, more than 3,000 species and 5,000 botanical varieties thrive, including rare species and valuable specimens such as Encephalartos, ancient fossil cycads belonging to the Zamiaceae family. Architecturally, the complex is equally diverse: alongside the “Palazzo” and the “Palmento,” refined testimonies to the area's agricultural past, stands the “Tropical Greenhouse,” home to exotic species such as Ravenala madagascariensis and Cyathea australis.
Designed as a natural extension of the botanical route, the Butterfly House will become part of Radicepura in 2026, expanding the spaces dedicated to research, conservation, and the discovery of lepidopterans. The new greenhouse will offer an immersive, controlled environment where visitors can observe species from different ecosystems up close and explore their life cycles and their relationships with host plants.