The world built cathedrals for its plants.

🇺🇸 Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

2024

Longwood Gardens West Conservatory

The largest construction project in Longwood Gardens' history, with a roof and walls that open according to the weather.

The dome, originally timber-framed, was rebuilt in steel and aluminium in 1949 and reglazed in a renovation completed in 2024.

1904

Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory

🇺🇸 Detroit, Michigan

🇺🇸 Asheville, North Carolina

1895

Biltmore Estate Conservatory

Vanderbilt's estate conservatory, completed in 1895 at the foot of the walled garden, has a forty-foot palm room and more than five hundred orchids.

🇺🇸 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1897

Frick Greenhouse (The Frick Pittsburgh, Clayton estate)

The greenhouse built in 1897 for Henry Clay Frick's estate, designed by Alden & Harlow with the glasshouse builders Lord & Burnham.

Built in 1906 for the financier George W. Perkins, the glasshouse was rebuilt in 1969, keeping only its original portico.

1906–1907

Marco Polo Stufano Conservatory (Wave Hill)

🇺🇸 Bronx, New York

One of the last great Victorian 'Crystal Palace' greenhouses still standing in the United States.

1915

Marjorie McNeely Conservatory

🇺🇸 Saint Paul, Minnesota

🇺🇸 San Francisco, California

2008

Osher Rainforest (California Academy of Sciences)

Beneath the living roof of Renzo Piano's museum, a 27-metre glass sphere holds a tropical rainforest rising through four levels.

Award-winning at the Paris World's Fair before crossing the Atlantic.

South America (17)

1889 · 1897

Invernáculo of the Carlos Thays Botanical Garden

🇦🇷 Buenos Aires

ArgentinaView entry →

1928–1929

Dr. Frederico Carlos Hoehne Greenhouses (São Paulo Botanical Garden)

🇧🇷 São Paulo, State of São Paulo

Twin greenhouses with an iron frame from England, at the very origin of the São Paulo Botanical Garden, one devoted to the Atlantic Forest.

A micro-orchid section comes with magnifying glasses, so visitors can see flowers barely two millimetres across.

Orchid House, Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden

🇧🇷 Rio de Janeiro

🇧🇷 São Paulo, Parque Villa-Lobos (Alto de Pinheiros)

2010

Ruth Cardoso Orchid House (Orquidário Ruth Cardoso, Villa-Lobos Park)

Designed by Decio Tozzi in the spirit of an Indigenous oca, this orchid house reopened in 2026 after about ten years of closure.

Some 18,000 pots of orchids held as a scientific collection, including many threatened Brazilian species.

1928

Orchid House, Institute of Botany

🇧🇷 São Paulo

A glass-walled conservatory, once heated by coal and wood, shelters orchids, ferns and a breadfruit tree from Java in Lota's historic park.

Plant Conservatory, Parque Isidora Cousiño (Lota Park)

🇨🇱 Lota, Biobío Region

ChileView entry →

Palacete de Cristal, Irmãos Villas-Bôas Botanical Garden

🇧🇷 Sorocaba, State of São Paulo

A 500 m² glass palace on a metal frame, modelled on the crystal palaces of London, Petrópolis and Curitiba.

Three iron-and-glass domes inspired by the Crystal Palace, now the defining image of Curitiba.

1991

Estufa do Jardim Botânico de Curitiba

🇧🇷 Curitiba, Paraná

🇿🇦 Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), Eastern Cape

Africa (8)

1882

Pearson Conservatory (St George's Park)

A Scottish-made Victorian conservatory shipped in kit form to the Eastern Cape, its cast iron original but its timber replaced in the 2009-2011 rebuild.

Served as a filming location for 'Tarzan the Ape Man' in 1932.

1832

Jardin d'Essai du Hamma

🇩🇿 Algiers

AlgeriaView entry →

1997

Botanical Society Conservatory (Kirstenbosch)

🇿🇦 Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, Cape Town

Around a baobab, each bed of this 1997 conservatory recreates a southern African region using that region's own rocks.

Opened in October 2025, this tropical house took over from the historic Ernest Thorp Orchid House, closed after the 2022 floods.

2025

Tropical Display House

🇿🇦 Durban

Created in 1868 by Khedive Ismail, this acclimatisation garden keeps old iron-and-glass greenhouses in the heart of Zamalek.

1868–1871

Historic Greenhouses of the Zohria Garden (Hadiqat al-Zohriya)

🇪🇬 Zamalek, Cairo

EgyptView entry →

1922 · 1920

Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden Glasshouses

🇿🇦 Stellenbosch, Western Cape

A Welwitschia sown in 1926 by the first curator still grows in its original spot, in an arid house that has since been rebuilt twice.

🇪🇬 Antoniadis Gardens, Alexandria

Royal Greenhouse (al-Sawba al-Malakiyya), Antoniadis Gardens

A large wrought-iron and glass greenhouse, restored in Alexandria's Antoniadis Gardens, where tropical and rare plants can be seen.

EgyptView entry →

1934

Royal Greenhouse (al-Sawba al-Malakiyya), Montaza Palace Gardens

🇪🇬 Montaza Palace Gardens, Alexandria

Built by King Fuad I in 1934, a glass-roofed greenhouse holding tropical and shade plants at the far end of the Montaza park.

EgyptView entry →

Asia (273)

2013

Donggung Botanical Garden, Gyeongju Donggungwon (경주동궁원 동궁식물원)

🇰🇷 Gyeongju (Bomun tourist complex), North Gyeongsang

A glasshouse crowned with golden chimi and lotus-patterned tiles, recalling the Silla palace where rare flowers and birds were kept.

South KoreaView entry →

1991

Forsgate Conservatory

🇭🇰 Hong Kong

Three climates under glass nestled among the skyscrapers of Central.

China (Hong Kong)View entry →

2019

Jewel Changi Airport: Forest Valley and glass dome

🇸🇬 Changi Airport, Singapore

A toroidal glass-and-steel dome covers an indoor forest open day and night, around a 40 m waterfall.

SingaporeView entry →

1986 · 2019

Tropical Conservatory, Jerusalem Botanical Gardens

🇮🇱 Givat Ram, Jerusalem

A single gardener tends the mini rainforest growing, almost secretly, at the heart of Jerusalem.

IsraelView entry →

2006

Bucheon Botanical Garden Glasshouse (부천식물원)

🇰🇷 Bucheon (Chunui-dong, Wonmi-gu), Gyeonggi

A glasshouse laid out as a peach blossom, Bucheon's emblem, at the heart of a municipal ecology park.

South KoreaView entry →

1990

Butterfly Greenhouse, Itami City Museum of Insects (伊丹市昆虫館チョウ温室)

🇯🇵 Itami, Hyōgo Prefecture

A 15-metre hemispherical glass greenhouse where some 1,000 butterflies of about fourteen species fly all year round.

JapanView entry →

2015

Dubai Butterfly Garden

🇦🇪 Dubai

Over 15,000 butterflies under climate-controlled domes in the middle of the desert.

United Arab EmiratesView entry →

2010

Four Seasons Hall (glasshouse), Hwaseong Uri Flower Botanical Garden (화성시 우리꽃식물원 사계절관)

🇰🇷 Hwaseong (Paltan-myeon), Gyeonggi

A glasshouse under a hanok roof where five of Korea's great mountains are rebuilt in miniature, planted by altitude zone.

South KoreaView entry →

Oceania (33)

1930

Fitzroy Gardens Conservatory

🇦🇺 Melbourne, Victoria

A Spanish Mission-style display house, opened in 1930, where the floral displays change five times a year.

🇦🇺 Orange, New South Wales

1934

Blowes Conservatory (Cook Park)

Donated in 1934 by Mayor Alfred William Blowes, it grows tuberous begonias, the first of them a gift from the City of Ballarat.

🇦🇺 Machattie Park, Bathurst, New South Wales

1936

Begonia House, Machattie Park

Every year from February to April, some 300 tuberous begonias rise in tiers along the L-shaped stands of this 1936 glasshouse.

Funded by a 1928 fete and opened in February 1929, it was then considered the largest display house in New Zealand.

1928–1929

Display House (Greenhouse), Oamaru Public Gardens

🇳🇿 Oamaru, Otago

New ZealandView entry →

1940

Virginia Lake Winter Gardens (Rotokawau)

🇳🇿 Whanganui, Manawatū-Whanganui

Built in 1940 to mark New Zealand's centennial, the glasshouse extends from a streamlined Moderne entrance building beside Lake Rotokawau.

New ZealandView entry →

2007

Amazon Waterlily Pavilion

🇦🇺 Adelaide Botanic Garden, Adelaide, South Australia

Load-bearing columns and beams of laminated glass: a 2007 pavilion built around the heritage pond of the 1867 Victoria House.

Bendigo's first prefabricated building, this 1897 cast-iron conservatory is the only nineteenth-century conservatory left standing in a public park in Victoria.

1897

Rosalind Park Conservatory

🇦🇺 Bendigo, Victoria

Given in 1966 by a daughter in memory of her father, this glasshouse copied the infra-red heating of Wellington's Begonia House.

1966

John Holt Memorial Display House (Cornwall Park)

🇳🇿 Hastings, Hawke's Bay

New ZealandView entry →

Architecture

All architecture →

437 works presented in detail, with their history and what to know before visiting.

1826–1841

London Zoo: Burton's layout and buildings

🇬🇧 London (Regent's Park)

The layout and first buildings of London Zoo, designed by Burton under the influence of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris; those still standing include an iron cage, the former camel house, a tunnel and the giraffe house.

United KingdomView entry →

1982

16th Street Mall

🇺🇸 Denver (Colorado)

A mile-long street set aside for buses and pedestrians, paved with grey and red granite in a diamond pattern, opened in 1982 in downtown Denver.

A performance hall buried beneath the pyramid, created by I. M. Pei along with the other underground visitor spaces of the Grand Louvre.

1989

Louvre Auditorium (Michel Laclotte auditorium)

🇫🇷 Paris

FranceView entry →

2003

Exhibition Hall of the German Historical Museum (Pei Building)

🇩🇪 Berlin (Mitte)

A triangular building of light stone, opened by a glass hall from which a glazed spiral staircase projects outwards.

GermanyView entry →

1982

Fragrant Hill Hotel (香山饭店)

🇨🇳 Beijing (Xiangshan Park)

A hotel stretched out horizontally, with white walls and grey roofs, arranged around eleven courtyards and a glazed atrium, in Xiangshan Park.

ChinaView entry →

1963

Luce Memorial Chapel (Tunghai University)

🇹🇼 Taichung

Four curved surfaces of reinforced concrete that leave a strip of sky open along the ridge, at the centre of a university campus.

TaiwanView entry →

2009

Macao Science Center

🇲🇴 Macao

An inclined cone surrounded by water on three sides, its fourteen galleries rising in a spiral, set off by an arch-shaped glass viewing deck.

China (Macao)View entry →

1997

Miho Museum

🇯🇵 Kōka (Shigaraki), Shiga Prefecture

A museum about 80% buried in the mountainside, reached by a walkway of weeping cherry trees, a tunnel and a bridge.

JapanView entry →

Greenhouses to Visit in London: from Kew Gardens to the Barbican

Kew's Palm House and Temperate House, the Barbican, Sky Garden, Syon Park… every greenhouse in London and its suburbs, with photos and visiting tips.

Days out

Greenhouses to Visit in Paris: from the Jardin des Plantes to Auteuil

The Grandes Serres of the Jardin des Plantes, the Jardin des Serres d'Auteuil, the Vincennes zoo's Great Greenhouse… the greenhouses of Paris and its edges, with photos and visiting tips.

Palmenhaus Schönbrunn (Great Palm House), Vienna, Schönbrunn Palace Park

Days out

Greenhouses to Visit in Vienna: Schönbrunn, the Burggarten and More

The Schönbrunn Palm House, the Burggarten Palm House, the Desert House, the Botanical Garden glasshouses… Vienna's greenhouses, with photos and visiting tips.

Lalbagh Glass House, Bangalore (Bengaluru), Karnataka

Travel

The Glass Houses of India: from Colonial Conservatories to New Glass Palaces

Lalbagh in Bangalore, Ooty, Kuppanna Park in Mysore, Davanagere, Chennai… India's glass houses, with photos and visiting tips.