Terre de Dragons Tropical Dome (formerly Planète des Crocodiles)

La Planète des Crocodiles opened in August 2008 at Civaux, in the Vienne department, at the foot of the nuclear power station. The client was the Vienne departmental council, which commissioned the greenhouse from AP-MA architecture as lead firm, with Jean-Philippe Gautier as project architect. The building cost 5.9 million euros at 2008 prices, and the practice describes it as only the second structure of its kind built in France at the time.

The project took its cue from the Ferme aux crocodiles at Pierrelatte in the Drôme. From the start the park presented itself as a conservation venture: keepers collect and incubate the eggs, and the young spend their first months in a nursery, the stated aim being to build up a biological reserve for the species on show. In 2011, three years after opening, France 3 already counted it among the main tourist draws of the department.

In 2021 the site dropped its original name and became Terre de Dragons. The visit is now framed by a storyline about a fictional dragon hunter, Professor Sheppard, whose plane supposedly crashed near Civaux and who set out to link the dragons of legend with today's crocodilians. According to Wikipedia, the park receives about 45,000 visitors a year.

The greenhouse is a broad dome 82 metres in diameter and 15 metres high, covering about 5,000 m². Its frame is made of built-up welded steel arches (known in France as PRS), braced by red posts that combine masts and cables. Strictly speaking it is not glazed: the envelope consists of polycarbonate panels. AP-MA states that the outline of the dome deliberately recalls the iron-and-glass architecture of the nineteenth century.

Its most unusual feature is the heating, which draws on cooling water from the neighbouring nuclear power station. The boiler rooms and settling tanks are buried underground in reinforced-concrete structures. The animal pools are formed in sprayed concrete over waterproof membranes, and the walkways above them pair galvanised steel beams with hardwood decking. The engineering consultancies Sicre (structure) and Girus (building services) worked on the design. The whole park, indoors and out, covers about 10,000 m², and the current layout divides the route into five immersive rooms.

The official website speaks of around 300 animals, while Wikipedia lists some 200 in twelve species, nine of them crocodilians: Nile crocodile, saltwater crocodile, Chinese alligator, American alligator, African dwarf crocodile, African false gharial and three caimans. The park also keeps a green anaconda, rhinoceros iguanas bred on site, green iguanas, a giant Madagascar gecko and a Seychelles giant tortoise. An albino alligator called Dundee has pride of place; the park describes it as one of about a hundred such animals in the world.

On the plant side the site claims about a thousand plants, flowers and trees. Hibiscus, orchids, bananas, papaya, mango and cotton plants make up a tropical forest that, according to France 3, is tended by an English gardener committed to nature-friendly methods. The animals are distributed across six biotopes.

The park lies on the edge of Civaux, on the route du Fond d'Orveau, about half an hour's drive from Poitiers, and shares its car park with the Abyssea leisure pool. The whole visit takes place under the dome, punctuated by regular feeding sessions and by the set pieces of the storyline: an abandoned laboratory, a plane sunk in the Louisiana pool, an African hut and an Egyptian temple. Net walkways run above some of the enclosures. About 400 metres to the south, the village keeps a Merovingian necropolis protected as a historic monument, which makes a natural companion to the visit.