Huerto del Cura

The Huerto del Cura is a historic garden of just over 13,000 square metres within the Palmeral de Elche, in Elche. Its story begins in 1876, when farmer Andrés Castaño bought the plot; on his death it passed to his son, the priest José Castaño Sánchez, and the popular name "the priest's orchard" stuck ever since.

The Imperial Palm

The garden owes much of its fame to the Palmera Imperial, a date palm more than 160 years old with seven symmetrical branches growing from a single trunk just over a metre up, with an estimated weight of ten tonnes. It got its name in 1894, when Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as Sissi, visited the garden and remarked that the palm had the strength of an empire, words the priest Castaño took as the tree's definitive christening.

A protected garden

Declared a National Artistic Garden in 1943, the same day as the Alhambra and the Generalife, a category until then almost always tied to former royal estates, the Huerto holds close to a thousand palms alongside a wide collection of Mediterranean and subtropical plants, laid out along a route meant for an unhurried walk. Alongside the palms, the route takes in cacti, ponds and subtropical species that break up the green and give the garden a different character from the open orchards elsewhere in the Palmeral. It pairs well with a visit to the Basílica de Santa María or the Museo Arqueológico e Histórico de Elche, both a short walk away through the rest of the Palmeral.