Serre Fata Morgana

Opened in the early 2000s at the Prague Botanical Garden in Troja, the Fata Morgana greenhouse (skleník Fata Morgana) takes its name from its shifting, almost otherworldly atmosphere, evocative of desert mirages. Its design, championed from 1993 by garden director Jiří Haager, produced a structure unlike anything else in Europe: an S-shaped plan set against the natural rock of a south-facing hillside, which serves as the building's back wall. Across roughly 1,800 square meters and a 225-meter route, the greenhouse unfolds three distinct climate zones, from humid rainforest to desert, sheltering nearly 5,000 plant species. An artificial lake four meters deep and a waterfall nearly six meters high add to the sense of displacement, while the entire route was designed to be accessible to visitors with reduced mobility. Two decades after it opened, Fata Morgana remains one of the most spectacular tropical greenhouses in Central Europe, praised for the boldness of an architectural design carved directly into the slope.