The monument comprises of a complex of 11 buildings that from the second half of the 18th century to the 20th century functioned as a mining and later also as a forestry academy in Banská Štiavnica. Some of the buildings are original townsmen houses. They were adjusted to the needs of this, the world’s first technical university, founded by Maria Theresa in 1762. At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, in the centre of an older botanical garden, the new area of the Mining and Forestry Academy was built, which is dominated by large neo-Renaissance objects. The garden, linked to the Forestry Department at the Mining Academy, was gradually planted from 1838 to 1861. It consists of two parts, separated by a road. The older Lower Garden was created on the site of the former garden at the restaurant Fortuna. After ground modifications and an irrigation system construction since 1844 almost 500 seedlings of domestic and exotic woods have been planted here. In 1854 the land of so-called Kaluserovská záhrada gardens was purchased, where at first a nursery for indigenous and exotic plant cultivation was established. Its transformation into the Upper Garden began after 1857. This section is still open to the public. Among its rare species there are Giant Sequoia, Cedar of Lebanon as well as the Atlantic Cedar which were planted in 1880. The Academy, during a period of more than 150 years, educated elite mining, metallurgical and forestry experts, was abolished after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918. The responsibility for the maintenance of the garden was assumed by a newly-established secondary school of forestry, which has managed it until the present.
Heritage > National cultural monuments
