The University Square / (Universitetsplatsen)
Where the current University Square broadens out was, in the late 17th century, the site of the former botanical gardens. In the mid-18th century plans were adopted by Carl Hårleman for new botanical gardens on the same site where they remained up until the 1860s. Best known was the cultivation of 50,000 mulberry trees for the production of Swedish silk. In 1862 construction of new botanical gardens began east of the city wall.
When the new University building was constructed in the 1870s, the site had to be cleared.
The University Square was planned by Helgo Zettervall as a unit with University Hall and the Academic Association (AF) facing each other. As a companion piece to Lundagård House on the south side, Palaestra et Odeum was constructed on the north.
Today, only a few plants remain of the former gardens. However, the oldest of the splendid magnolia trees, which have become a symbol of Lund University, were planted just before the First World War, whilst the southern group came in the 1960s.
In the middle of University Square is a fountain (designed by Zettervall) that rises from a sunken pond, surrounded by flower beds. At the fountain there is a plaque with the text Meridian of the academic quarter, 1 hour and 15 minutes from Greenwich Mean Time. Placed here by Uarda-Academy on 27th. April 1996.
Within University Square are several statues of eminent scientists: Kilian Stobaeus the elder, Sven Lagerbring and Anders Jahan Retzius.
One contextually odd sculpture is “The man breaking out of the rock”