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–18th 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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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, France · 1833–1836
The secret backdrop for the imagined jungles painted by Henri Rousseau, the 'Douanier'.
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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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Curvilinear Range & Great Palm House
🇮🇪 Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland · 1843–1869 · Palm House 1883
The dome of the same Richard Turner who designed Kew's Palm House.
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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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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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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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Temperate House
🇬🇧 Kew, London, United Kingdom · 1860–1899
The largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world.
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Pálmaház du Füvészkert de Budapest
🇭🇺 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, Chile · 1865
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, United Kingdom · 1873
A travelling Victorian glasshouse: built on the shores of Loch Long, it was dismantled and shipped by barge to Glasgow's botanic gardens.
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Serres Royales de Laeken
🇧🇪 Brussels, Belgium · 1874–1905
Open to the public for only a few weeks each year, in spring.
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166 botanical and historic greenhouses, across 59 countries, organized by continent in the complete catalogue.
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