Glasshouses and Victoriahaus of the Leipzig University Botanical Garden

The garden's origins are dated in different ways: English Wikipedia traces it to at least 1542, when a monastery garden was turned into a physic garden, while German Wikipedia gives 1580. At the old site on the Pleißemühlgraben, glasshouses were built only after 1840; by 1857, 4,500 of the more than 10,000 species grown lived under glass.

In 1876 the Victoria house was erected to plans by the garden's director August Schenk and the city building councillor Gustav Müller. The following year the garden moved to Linnéstraße, where the glasshouse area reached 1,232 m², more than double that of the old site. The air raids of 4 December 1943 and 27 February 1945 devastated the houses and left fifteen craters; only 26 cool-house plants survived. All the display houses had been restored by 1954.

From 1992 to 2004 the garden was completely renewed: a butterfly house opened on 25 July 1996, the glasshouses were demolished in 1998 and five new ones were built in 1999-2000. The Victoria house was kept and moved south, by about 30 m according to the university and 25 m according to the press. After a two-year restoration funded in part by the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung, it reopened on 25 June 2018. A research greenhouse for the iDiv institute was inaugurated in 2019.

The Victoria house is a type of glasshouse designed specifically for the tropical giant water lily. It takes the form of a flattened pyramid on an octagonal plan, topped by an umbrella-like roof. According to the Leipzig press, Germany once had about a dozen such houses; of the five comparable houses that survive worldwide, Leipzig's is the third oldest and the only original one left in Germany. Much of its fabric still dates from 1876. The restoration completed in 2018 was carried out by the Saxon state property and building agency (SIB), with planning led by the architect Andreas Carl.

The five houses of 1999-2000 together cover about 2,400 m² and are divided between several climates: tropical houses, a Mediterranean house, a succulent house and a mangrove house. None of the sources consulted gives their dimensions or names their architect.

The tropical houses present species from tropical forests ranging from South America to Asia. The Mediterranean house gathers plants from regions with a Mediterranean climate, the succulent house the vegetation of tropical semi-deserts, and the mangrove house species that live at the water's edge. Overall the glasshouses hold subtropical and tropical plants from the Mediterranean, Africa, Central America and Australia.

The Victoria house holds several species of water lily. The link with Leipzig is an old one: the botanist Eduard Friedrich Poeppig, who worked in the city, was the first to describe the Amazonian giant water lily scientifically. Of the 26 cool-house plants that survived the war, a strawberry tree and a pomegranate are still in cultivation.

The garden, run by the university, lies at Linnéstraße 1. Its 3.5 hectares, home to several thousand species outdoors and under glass, can be covered in one to two hours, glasshouses included. The butterfly house, opened in 1996, adds to the glasshouses in the warmer months, and the Victoria house is best seen once the water lilies have spread their great leaves. Elsewhere in the city, Leipzig Zoo and its large tropical hall, Gondwanaland, extend the theme of the tropics under glass.