Glasshouses of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University Botanical Garden (UPJŠ)

The Košice botanic garden came into being on 5 May 1950 as the botanical institute of the College of Agricultural and Forestry Engineering. It passed to the Slovak Academy of Sciences in 1953 and in 1964 to Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, to which it still belongs; as its director Pavol Mártonfi puts it, the garden is older than the university.

The three large display houses and several smaller glasshouses were completed in 1958; the Viktória tropical house, named after the giant waterlily, was built afterwards. Open to the public since 1950, the garden was declared a protected area in August 2002. Between 2014 and 2016 major works renewed the structure and heating of the three largest houses, and other buildings were then refurbished in stages.

At the time of its 75th anniversary in 2025, however, the management pointed to a heavy maintenance backlog: the roofs of the cactus houses are damaged and the Viktória house, whose heating is failing, needs to be completely rebuilt. The garden received more than 85,000 visitors in 2024.

The complex lies at the foot of the hills on the northern edge of Košice, in a garden of some thirty hectares, 24 of them taken up by the arboretum. It combines six display houses and ten growing houses; the university puts their area at 3,500 m², the local press at 3,200 m², while Wikipedia gives 1,742 m² without saying what the figure covers.

Each display house recreates a habitat. House II is the tallest, at 12 metres, and contains a waterfall and a pool. House IV, the Viktória house, is the warmest and most humid in the complex, with two fish pools where tropical waterlilies flower in season. House V is devoted to succulents and House VI to subtropical fruit. The 2014–2016 renovation dealt with the frame and the heating of the three largest houses.

House I shows palms and plants from Central and South America such as cacao, begonias, bromeliads, orchids and ferns, along with Australian and South-East Asian species. House II, focused on South-East Asia, holds a giant bamboo with culms 10 to 25 cm thick and regularly hosts orchid exhibitions. House III evokes the forests of Asia, Africa and the Americas with figs, cycads and fruit trees. The Viktória house brings together bromeliads, orchids, epiphytic cacti and climbers.

The succulent house gathers cacti and other succulents from the Americas and southern Africa: about 11,000 cacti of roughly 700 species, according to the director. House VI grows figs, carobs, olives and citrus. The oldest resident is a female cycad about 150 years old, and the garden also keeps a Bonin Islands mulberry, a species said to number only some 150 mature trees worldwide.

The garden is on Mánesova street, in the Košice-Sever district. An hour is enough for the six display houses, but the 24-hectare arboretum deserves more time in the warmer months. Orchid exhibitions in House II and exotic butterfly shows, traditionally held in the Viktória house, punctuate the year, and winter is a good time for the heated houses. The garden also has a small petting zoo and a garden of aromatic and medicinal plants with Braille labels.