The Botanical garden was founded in 1772-1774. Almost immediately after its Foundation it was merged with the National history Museum, the Creator of which was the Marquis of Pombal. The place for the garden was chosen Vice-Chancellor of the University of Coimbra Francisco de Lemos. The garden is located on land that previously belonged to the School of St. Bento location valley Ursuline. First curator of the garden was Domingos Vandelli, and in 1791 he was replaced by Felix Alawar Brotero, Professor of botany and agriculture. The garden is constantly expanding, there are new specimens of plants, and today the garden covers an area of 13 hectares.

Botanical garden of the University of Coimbra is one of the most beautiful gardens in Europe and consists of two parts. One part is located on a hill and is divided into terraces. The lower terrace is called Quadrado Central and is the oldest part of the garden. The terrace is decorated with a fountain 40-ies, you can see the trees planted during the time of supervision of the garden Felix Brotero. The décor of the terrace have a lot in common with the decor of European gardens in the eighteenth century. On the other terraces you can see the greenhouses with tropical and subtropical trees and flowerbeds of whole families of plants. On these beds the plants are divided into groups of taxonomically and grown for student use-botanists, as well as for sharing with other similar institutions around the world that have Botanical gardens.

In the second part of the garden lay the valley, through which flows a small stream, and where the arboretum. There grows a lot of bamboo trees and other exotic plants. Also the second part of the garden is famed for its excellent collection of eucalyptus (51 species). The garden is home to birds. Family of brown squirrels are part of the ecosystem, which was successfully implemented in June 1994. Proteins were the first animals that are well adapted to the environment and begin to multiply.