The Botanical Garden of Padua was founded in 1545 for the growth and study of medicinal plants, called "Horto medicinale", as plants were in that time the most used resource for medical treatment of diseases. It is regarded as the first university botanical garden in the world. The German poet Goethe visited the garden in 1786 where he studied a palm tree, observations which he used for his essay "The Metamorphosis of Plants".