The Giardino della Minerva it has origins in the 13th century and was designed by the doctor and botanist Matteo Silvatico, a leading figure of Salerno Medical School . Used as a hortus sanitatis for teaching botany and of phytotherapy , the garden was 
organized in sophisticated terraces that exploited an advanced water canalization system, allowing the cultivation and classification of numerous medicinal plants, many of which were rare for the time. Silvatico compiled part of the “Opus Pandectarum Medicinae”, one of the first European botanical-medical encyclopedias, making the garden a pioneering center of 
medieval herbal science and an identifying element of the Salerno medical tradition.