Very many people don’t know this place, nevertheless it is one of the most beautiful green tiny plot of land in Milan. It’s the Hortus Botanicus Braidensis, the emerald enclosed inside Brera Palace, commissioned by Mary Therese of Austria as a scientific-didactic area for her medical students. Since 1800 and with the help of a strapping Napoleon it has been a public place opened to everybody. To get there you have to trespass unarmed the Academy’s hallways: a path resembling a labyrinth in which pigeons will enjoy to watch you in a threatening way, as they were impersonating those of Hitchcock in his film “The Birds”. But don’t be afraid: the effort will be repaid as soon as you cross the gate. Among the gems of the orchard there are the two secular ginkgo biloba, male and female (try to understand how to know which is which), a lime 40 metres high and savage flowerbeds rich in medicinal plants. Definitely one of the few places in Milan in which run away from the smog trap. The garden also houses events and exhibits in the open air. Our suggestion is to go there alone, or in honey company, in a morning of autumn or a spring afternoon, possibly avoiding those ghostly hallways and getting in through the shortcut of via Fiori oscuri 4.