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Butterfly Houses: Where to See Tropical Butterflies All Year Round

By the Verrière editors · Published on September 30, 2026

Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory, Niagara Falls, Ontario
Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory — Photo: Rlevse (CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped)

A butterfly house is a miniature rainforest tuned to the exact degree so that hundreds of butterflies can fly freely around visitors. The Verrière atlas lists several, from Niagara Falls to Vienna and from Konya to Melbourne — some with butterflies only in season.

Butterflies all year round

These greenhouses are entirely devoted to butterflies, or give them a permanent wing. New butterflies emerge every day: a sunny morning is often the best time to see them active.

  1. Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory

    🇨🇦 Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada · 1996

    More than 2,000 tropical butterflies fly freely beneath its glasshouse, replenished at a rate of 3,000 imported chrysalises each month.

    Discover the full entry →

  2. Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory

    🇨🇦 Cambridge, Ontario, Canada · 2001

    A privately run tropical greenhouse where more than 2,000 free-flying butterflies of some 40 species live beside the Kossuth Bog.

    Discover the full entry →

  3. Butterfly House

    🇦🇺 Melbourne Zoo, Parkville, Australia · 1985

    At Melbourne Zoo, a free-flight butterfly house opened on December 11, 1985.

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  4. Konya Tropikal Kelebek Bahçesi

    🇹🇷 Selçuklu, Konya, Turkey · 2015

    Beneath a butterfly-shaped glass roof, dozens of tropical butterfly species fly freely in the heart of Anatolia.

    Discover the full entry →

  5. Dubai Butterfly Garden

    🇦🇪 Dubai, United Arab Emirates · 2015

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

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  6. Butterfly Pavilion, Noor Island

    🇦🇪 Noor Island, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates · 2015

    Four thousand gilded aluminum petals form the cocoon beneath which five hundred tropical butterflies flutter, facing Sharjah's waterfront.

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  7. The Butterfly Gardens Abu Dhabi (Al Qana biodomes)

    🇦🇪 Al Qana (Al Maqta), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates · 2026

    Two biodomes clad in UV-filtering panels shelter more than 10,000 butterflies in front of Al Qana's National Aquarium.

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  8. Papiliorama (tropical domes at Kerzers)

    🇨🇭 Kerzers, Canton of Fribourg, Switzerland · 2003

    Founded at Marin in 1988 and rebuilt after a fire in 1995, the tropical garden moved in 2003 under a 40-metre dome at Kerzers.

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  9. Schmetterlingshaus (Butterfly House) in the Elbauenpark

    🇩🇪 Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany · 2000

    Opened in 2000 to revive the park of the 1999 Bundesgartenschau, a glass pavilion where hundreds of tropical butterflies fly.

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  10. Collodi Butterfly House (Casa delle Farfalle), Garzoni Garden

    🇮🇹 Collodi (province of Pistoia), Tuscany, Italy · 2006-2007

    A structural-glass prism holding some 5,000 tropical butterflies, set on the site of the old greenhouses of a Tuscan baroque garden.

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  11. Berkenhof Tropical Zoo (butterfly garden glasshouses)

    🇳🇱 Kwadendamme (Langeweegje), Zeeland, Netherlands · 1997

    Born of a fuchsia garden, a butterfly garden opened in 1997 in a small single-glazed greenhouse and grew into a tropical zoo.

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  12. Vlinderparadijs Papiliorama (Havelte tropical butterfly greenhouse)

    🇳🇱 Havelte (Westerveld), Drenthe, Netherlands · 1998

    Hundreds of tropical butterflies have flown free since 1998 in more than 900 m² of greenhouse on the edge of the Holtingerveld heath.

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  13. Benalmádena Butterfly Park (Mariposario de Benalmádena, now Monowa)

    🇪🇸 Benalmádena, Andalusia, Spain · 2011

    A Thai-style butterfly house whose glazed tropical garden of over 900 m² holds up to 2,000 free-flying butterflies.

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  14. Drago Butterfly Park (Mariposario del Drago)

    🇪🇸 Icod de los Vinos, Tenerife (Canary Islands), Spain · 1997

    A glazed tropical garden beside Icod's famous Drago Milenario, where more than 800 exotic butterflies fly freely.

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  15. Palm House (Butterfly House), Williamson Park

    🇬🇧 Lancaster, Lancashire, United Kingdom · c. 1909

    Paid for by Lord Ashton opposite the Ashton Memorial, this Edwardian palm house is now a tropical butterfly house.

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  16. Burggarten Palmenhaus

    🇦🇹 Vienna, Austria · 1902–1906

    An art nouveau glasshouse built for the imperial court, now divided between a restaurant, a butterfly house and a public glasshouse.

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

    🇯🇵 Itami, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan · 1990

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

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  18. Butterfly Greenhouse, Kashihara City Museum of Insects (橿原市昆虫館 放蝶温室)

    🇯🇵 Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, Japan · 1989

    A glasshouse shaped like a butterfly with outspread wings, where some 500 subtropical butterflies fly all year round.

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  19. Cockrell Butterfly Center (Houston Museum of Natural Science)

    🇺🇸 Houston, Texas, United States · 1994

    A 75-foot glass cone engineered to withstand Category 5 hurricane winds while sheltering some 1,500 free-flying butterflies.

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  20. Rosine Smith Sammons Butterfly House and Insectarium (Texas Discovery Gardens)

    🇺🇸 Dallas, Texas, United States · 1936 (Garden Room) · 2009 (butterfly house)

    Its 1936 Garden Room is billed as the first public conservatory in the American Southwest; tropical butterflies now fly inside.

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  21. Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center (Callaway Gardens)

    🇺🇸 Pine Mountain, Georgia, United States · 1988

    Between 1,200 and 2,000 tropical butterflies, emerging on site from imported chrysalides, fly freely under this glass dome opened in 1988.

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  22. Magic Wings Butterfly House (Museum of Life and Science)

    🇺🇸 Durham, North Carolina, United States · 1999

    A 35-foot glass conservatory where hundreds of tropical butterflies fly among more than 200 varieties of plants.

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  23. Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory & Gardens

    🇺🇸 South Deerfield, Massachusetts, United States · 2000

    More than 4,000 butterflies of over 70 species fly year-round in a glass conservatory held at 78–80 °F in the Connecticut River valley.

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  24. Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House (Missouri Botanical Garden)

    🇺🇸 Chesterfield, Missouri, United States · 1998

    Its 8,000 sq ft butterfly conservatory is sheathed in 646 glass panels, each weighing about 200 pounds, set in five vaults.

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  25. Wings of the Tropics, Butterfly Pavilion

    🇺🇸 Westminster, Colorado, United States · 1995

    The indoor rainforest of the first stand-alone AZA-accredited invertebrate zoo, alive with butterflies of more than 200 species.

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  26. Butterfly Wonderland

    🇺🇸 Scottsdale (Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community), Arizona, United States · 2013

    Ten thousand square feet of glass and rainforest in the Sonoran Desert, where up to 4,000 butterflies from three continents fly at once.

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  27. Butterfly Biosphere at Thanksgiving Point (Beverley Taylor Sorenson Butterfly Conservatory)

    🇺🇸 Lehi, Utah, United States · 2019

    Utah's first insectarium: more than a thousand butterflies of around a hundred species under glass at 85 °F, inside a former retail centre.

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  28. Reiman Gardens Conservatory Complex (Hughes Conservatory and Christina Reiman Butterfly Wing)

    🇺🇸 Ames, Iowa, United States · 2002

    On the Iowa State University campus, a tropical wing kept at 27 °C can hold up to 800 butterflies of 80 species.

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  29. Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden Conservatory

    🇺🇸 Richmond, Virginia, United States · 2003 · expanded 2026

    The 2003 conservatory nearly doubled in size in 2026 and now includes a permanent butterfly house.

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Butterflies in season

Elsewhere, butterflies only move in for an annual or seasonal exhibition. Check the dates on the official website before you go.

  1. Casa delle Farfalle (Butterfly House), Bordano

    🇮🇹 Bordano, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy · 2003

    In a village levelled by the 1976 earthquake, three tropical greenhouses of about 1,000 m² hold more than a thousand free-flying butterflies.

    Discover the full entry →

  2. Casa delle Farfalle (Butterfly House), Milano Marittima

    🇮🇹 Milano Marittima, Cervia (Province of Ravenna), Emilia-Romagna, Italy · 2002

    In the Cervia pinewood, a greenhouse of more than 500 m² where hundreds of tropical butterflies fly over a small lake.

    Discover the full entry →

  3. Oasi Rossi Butterfly House (Casa delle farfalle)

    🇮🇹 Santorso (Province of Vicenza), Veneto, Italy · 2005

    A climate-controlled greenhouse of more than 1,200 m² where tropical butterflies fly freely among visitors at the foot of Monte Summano.

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  4. Mesocosmo (Butterfly House), Natural History Museum of Salento

    🇮🇹 Calimera (Province of Lecce), Apulia, Italy · 2018

    A 630 m² rainforest cooled with groundwater, set in a holm-oak wood in the Salento peninsula.

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  5. Glaselefant (Glass Elephant) and Butterfly House, Maximilianpark

    🇩🇪 Hamm, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany · 1983-1984

    A 1902 coal washery turned into a 35-metre glass elephant, with a palm garden inside its head.

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  6. Butterfly Garden (Jardin des Papillons), Grevenmacher

    🇱🇺 Grevenmacher, Canton of Grevenmacher, Luxembourg · 1989

    A 600 m² tropical greenhouse opened in 1989 and now run as a sheltered workshop for people with intellectual disabilities.

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  7. Vlinders aan de Vliet (tropical butterfly garden)

    🇳🇱 Leidschendam (Leidschendam-Voorburg), South Holland, Netherlands · 2006

    A former plant-growing greenhouse turned in two months into a jungle where at least 1,500 tropical butterflies fly.

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  8. Sommerlunden Tropical House (formerly Bornholm Butterfly Park)

    🇩🇰 Nexø, Bornholm, Denmark · 1997

    A 1,000 m² glasshouse from a former Bornholm nursery, planted as a tropical forest where exotic butterflies fly free.

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  9. Wintertuin (Winter Garden)

    🇧🇪 Antwerp Zoo, Belgium · 1897

    The winter garden of one of the world's oldest zoos, where tropical butterflies sometimes flutter beneath a 19th-century glass roof.

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  10. Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory

    🇺🇸 Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States · 1995

    When it opened in 1995 it was billed as the largest tropical conservatory in Michigan.

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1157 botanical and historic greenhouses, across 76 countries, organized by continent in the complete catalogue.

Explore the full catalogue →