About Verrière
Verrière is an atlas of the world's greenhouses. Victorian palm houses, orangeries, modernist domes, the great tropical halls of botanical gardens and zoos: each entry tells the story of a glass building — who imagined it, how it was built, what it shelters — and how to visit it.
The site is free and independent; it is published in French and English, with German and Japanese versions. It starts from a simple question: where can you see, today, the finest glass architecture ever built for plants? The catalogue covers 1157 greenhouses in 76 countries and grows country by country, from public sources. It also presents the work of great architects for whom light, glass and nature matter, starting with Tadao Ando, I. M. Pei and Le Corbusier.
How greenhouses are chosen
The catalogue brings together greenhouses that are (or were) open to the public and are of architectural, historic or botanical interest: Victorian palm houses, orangeries, modernist domes, the great tropical halls of zoos, contemporary conservatories. Agricultural and commercial greenhouses are not included.
Each entry is built from public sources: official websites of botanical gardens and zoos, institutional archives and publications, specialist press, online encyclopedias. Research is carried out in the languages of the countries concerned. When a fact cannot be verified it is not published — an incomplete entry is better than an inaccurate one. The main sources are listed at the bottom of in-depth entries.
How works of architecture are chosen
The Architecture section presents architects whose work gives a large place to light, glass and nature, and, for each of them, all of their known works: those you can visit, those seen only from outside, those that have disappeared. Each page follows the rule of the greenhouse entries: verified public sources and nothing made up, so a page may be short. Private homes are not open to visitors: they are described without an address, placed at a point published by a public source, at neighbourhood or at city level, and removed on simple request.
The photos
Every photo is published under a free licence (Creative Commons BY or BY-SA, CC0 or public domain): they come from Wikimedia Commons, Flickr or our visitors. Each image is credited to its author, with its licence and a link to the original page. If you took one of these photos and would like its credit changed, write to contactgreennhouses@proton.me.
How the site is funded
Verrière is free. It is funded by partner links (tickets, activities, hotels), labelled as such on every entry: if you book through them we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. These partnerships have no influence on which greenhouses are included or how they are described. The site may also show one discreet ad slot.
Corrections and suggestions
A greenhouse missing? A wrong date? A greenhouse that closed or reopened? Corrections are welcome: they are checked and then added to the catalogue, which grows continuously.