The Oldest Greenhouses in the World Still Standing
By the Verrière editors · Published on September 30, 2026
Before the iron-and-glass greenhouse came the orangery: a masonry building with large south-facing windows where potted citrus trees spent the winter. Then the industrial revolution made the first almost fully glazed structures possible. Here, in chronological order, are the oldest greenhouses in the Verrière atlas that you can still see.
The age of orangeries (17th–early 19th century)
Thick walls, tall arched windows, an opaque roof: the baroque orangery is not yet a greenhouse in the modern sense, but it invents the purpose. Europe's royal courts competed to overwinter orange, lemon and palm trees in them.
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Orangery of the Palace of Versailles
🇫🇷 Versailles, France · 1684–1686
Designed by Hardouin-Mansart to shelter more than a thousand of Louis XIV's orange trees in winter.
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Karlsaue Orangery
🇩🇪 Kassel, Germany · 1701–1739
A princely orangery that served as both a summer residence and a citrus house.
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Old Orangery, Łazienki Park
🇵🇱 Warsaw, Poland · 1785–1788
The east wing of this neoclassical orangery still houses the court theatre built for Stanisław II August, opened on 6 September 1788.
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Łańcut Castle Orangery (Oranżeria)
🇵🇱 Łańcut, Podkarpackie, Poland · 1799–1802
Built for orange trees brought from Wilanów, Łańcut's neoclassical orangery yielded two original furnaces and heating channels during its renovation.
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The iron-and-glass pioneers (1820–1855)
Cast iron, then wrought iron, finally made it possible to slim down the structure and multiply the glazing. Within some thirty years, Paris, Dublin, London and Belfast produced the prototypes of every greenhouse to come.
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Serra Carolina (Giardino d'Inverno)
🇮🇹 Palermo, Italy · 1823
A gift from Queen Maria Carolina in 1823, this winter garden shelters coffee trees and papaya trees beneath the Sicilian sky.
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Grandes Serres du Jardin des Plantes
🇫🇷 Paris, Île-de-France, France · 1834–1836
Rohault de Fleury's two cast-iron and glass pavilions, designed from 1834, mark the beginning of metal architecture in France.
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Victorian Palm Houses, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
🇬🇧 Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom · 1834 / 1858
Two A-listed palm houses, from 1834 and 1858, joined into a single space by a five-year restoration completed in October 2026.
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Palm House
🇬🇧 Botanic Gardens, Belfast, United Kingdom · 1839–1852
One of the oldest surviving examples of a curvilinear cast-iron glasshouse, whitewashed every summer to protect the plants.
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Greenhouses of the Jardin des plantes de Rouen (central greenhouse of 1842)
🇫🇷 Rouen, Normandy, France · 1839-1842
A cast-iron and glass central greenhouse of 1839-1842, listed in 1975, extended by seven houses of 1884 and tropical houses of 1936.
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Serra Moresca of Villa Torlonia
🇮🇹 Rome, Lazio, Italy · 1839-1841
A Neo-Moorish greenhouse designed in 1839 by Giuseppe Jappelli, reopened in December 2021 after fourteen years of closure.
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Curvilinear Range & Great Palm House
🇮🇪 Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland · 1843–1869 · Palm House 1884
The central dome of the Curvilinear Range, by Richard Turner, who also built Kew's Palm House with Decimus Burton.
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Lednice Castle Greenhouse (zámecký skleník)
🇨🇿 Lednice, South Moravia, Czech Republic · 1843–1845
Commissioned in 1842 by the Prince of Liechtenstein, this 92 m nave of cast iron and glass carries some 65,000 scale-shaped panes.
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Palm House
🇬🇧 Kew, London, United Kingdom · 1844–1848
The technical cradle of every great glasshouse that followed.
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Wilhelma Historic Glasshouses (Kuppelhäuser)
🇩🇪 Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany · 1852–1853
Prefabricated cast-iron glasshouses of 1852-53, built to overwinter orange trees and grow the giant Victoria water lily, now aviaries.
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Balat Greenhouse (Balatkas or Kroonserre) of Meise Botanic Garden
🇧🇪 Meise, Flemish Brabant, Belgium · 1854
Designed in 1854 by Alphonse Balat for giant water lilies, this octagonal glasshouse was moved twice before reaching Meise.
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The golden age of glass palaces (1855–1875)
The technique was mastered and the model travelled: university botanical gardens, city parks and royal estates acquired their own palm houses, from Coimbra to Santiago de Chile and from Budapest to Copenhagen.
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Schaugewächshäuser of the Karlsruhe Botanical Garden
🇩🇪 Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany · 1853–1857
Three iron-and-glass houses designed by Heinrich Hübsch, destroyed in 1944-1945, rebuilt and then restored until 2018.
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Great Glasshouse, Coimbra Botanical Garden
🇵🇹 Coimbra, Portugal · 1859–1866
One of the earliest examples of iron architecture in Portugal, restored and reopened after decades of partial closure.
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Monleón Greenhouse, Jardí Botànic of the University of Valencia
🇪🇸 Valencia, Valencian Community, Spain · 1860-1862
Designed in 1859 by Sebastià Monleón, this iron-and-glass house is presented as the first building in Spain constructed with those materials.
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Temperate House
🇬🇧 Kew, London, United Kingdom · Opened: 1863 (central block), 1899 (wings)
The largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world.
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Pálmaház of the Füvészkert (Budapest Botanical Garden)
🇭🇺 Budapest, Hungary · 1865
The university botanical garden's 1865 palm house, immortalised in The Paul Street Boys.
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Quinta Normal Glasshouse
🇨🇱 Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region, Chile · c. 1865 (moved to Quinta Normal in 1890)
Once the glasshouse of railway magnate Henry Meiggs, now a national monument left derelict behind its railings.
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Palmehuset
🇳🇴 Tøyen Botanical Garden, Oslo, Norway · 1868
Oslo's oldest palm tree grew here for nearly two centuries.
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Palmengarten
🇩🇪 Frankfurt am Main, Germany · 1869–1871
Born when Frankfurt citizens bought the Duke of Nassau's winter-garden collection.
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Palmehuset
🇩🇰 University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden, Denmark · 1872–1874
Inspired by the Crystal Palace, this glass palace houses a cycad planted as early as 1824.
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Kibble Palace
🇬🇧 Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom · 1873
Built on the shores of Loch Long, this Victorian glasshouse was taken apart and carried by barge up the Clyde to Glasgow.
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Royal Greenhouses of Laeken
🇧🇪 Brussels, Belgium · 1874–1905
Open to the public for only a few weeks each year, in spring.
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The last arrivals of the 19th century (1875–1890)
By now the model was global: from Sweden to South Africa, from Italy to Alsace, late-century greenhouses show that the palm house had become standard equipment for botanical gardens and parks — and that some, closed for years, are still waiting to be restored.
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Palmhuset (Trädgårdsföreningen)
🇸🇪 Gothenburg, Västra Götaland, Sweden · 1878
A glass-and-iron palace prefabricated in Scotland and raised in 1878, one of the few large Victorian palm houses to survive.
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Greenhouses of the Giardino dei Semplici (Orto Botanico of Florence)
🇮🇹 Florence, Tuscany, Italy · 1880
A row of glasshouses more than 160 m long fronts Via Micheli, in one of the world's oldest botanical gardens, founded in 1545.
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Pearson Conservatory (St George's Park)
🇿🇦 Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), Eastern Cape, South Africa · 1882
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.
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Bary Greenhouse (former Victoria House), University of Strasbourg Botanical Garden
🇫🇷 Strasbourg, Grand Est, France · 1884-1885
The last survivor of the grand imperial glasshouses of 1884, this twelve-sided house was built for the giant Victoria water lily and remains unique in France.
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1157 botanical and historic greenhouses, across 76 countries, organized by continent in the complete catalogue.
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