The Trsteno Arboretum is located near Dubrovnik, in the small municipality of Trsteno, and covers an area of  about 25 ha.  Trsteno was established by the end of the fifteenth century as a park and summer residence of the Dubrovnik patrician family Gucetic. It has been protected and declared as property of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 1950, and in 1962 as a monument of garden architecture and a collection of decorative trees and bushes.

The Arboretum reserves a very special place among the old Ragusan, Dalmatian and Mediterranean parks due to its five-century-long continuous development from Gothic-Renaissance, Renaissance-Baroque and Romantic forms to the present. It includes a Gothic-Renaissance park surrounding the ancient summer residence, which is a monument of garden architecture, and the nineteenth-century neoromantic park. Its collection of exotic and decorative trees and shrubs includes over 300 species!

On October 2 and 3, 1991, the Serbo-Yugoslav army launched a series of gunboat and air attacks and set the Arboretum ablaze. Most of the Arboretum was destroyed by the fire. Fortunately,  the summer residence and the oldest part of the Arboretum were only partially damaged.

In the spirit of the new time, today the Arboretum of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Science in Trsteno is open for visitors and for all social ranks and it is used for cultural and historic purposes as a garden architectonic monument of past centuries and a collection of decorative trees and bushes, and also for scientific, searching, educational, tourist, recreate and other purposes.