Greenhouses of the Liège Botanical Garden

The Liège Botanical Garden was born with the university, founded in 1816 by King William I of the Netherlands. From 1819 it occupied the former garden of the Jesuit college, on what is now Place Cockerill, where the city architect Jean-Noël Chevron directed construction. In 1838 the city bought about five hectares in the Bas-Laveu district to move it there. Charles Morren, the garden's director, studied greenhouses in London, Edinburgh and Dublin that year and submitted his project in 1839, the year Julien-Étienne Rémont drew up the master plan. Planting began in 1841; interrupted in 1843 for lack of funds, the work stretched over decades under Édouard Morren, and the garden was inaugurated on 24 November 1883.

On 24 December 1944 a German flying bomb destroyed the great rotundas and their annexes: 151 species, or 755 specimens, were lost, and the frost of -15 °C on 25 and 26 December finished off the surviving subtropical plants. The houses rebuilt in 1954 were limited to the low buildings, covering 1,025 m² under a height ceiling of 4.75 metres, against 1,845 m² originally.

Decided in 1961, the transfer of the collections to the Sart Tilman campus began in 1968-1969; the site was protected in 1975 and classified in 1994. Since 2014 the Maison liégeoise de l'Environnement and other associations have taken part in running the greenhouses, and the garden underwent works in 2023-2024.

The 1839 scheme rested on two tiered, parallel and symmetrical ensembles, flanked by the Institute of Botany and its laboratories. Its most striking element was a pair of octagonal rotundas 17 metres high, one for palms and one for the orangery, provided for by a project informed by Charles Morren's study of British and Irish glasshouses. They vanished in 1944, together with the annexes around them.

What survives, rebuilt in 1954, is a set of low houses arranged in several sections: a tropical pavilion, temperate and hot houses, a cold house and a central aquarium. Sources differ on whether the plan is U-shaped or E-shaped. Heritage notices see in it a rare example of Victorian-style iron-and-glass architecture in Liège. The height limit of 4.75 metres imposed in 1954 prevented a return to the original silhouette and restricted the growth of the tallest plants. The two neighbouring neoclassical institutes, completed in 1884 for botany and pharmacy, have been classified since 1994.

The houses hold about five thousand plants on 1,050 m², according to heritage notices. The bromeliads recall the Morren family, who built up a notable collection of them in the nineteenth century; to these are added begonias from the C. Chevalier collection, cacti and succulents, orchids and carnivorous plants. Mediterranean and tropical species, among them banana, cocoa and vanilla, stand beside cycads described as exceptional, including Ceratozamia and Encephalartos.

The park around the glasshouses completes the ensemble with an arboretum in which some fifteen trees, planted between 1841 and 1854, rank among the most remarkable in Belgium. Before 1944 the houses had three climate zones, hot, cold and tropical, over nearly 1,850 m². Only part of that remains, but the present collections preserve the trace of this university botanical tradition.

The greenhouses stand on Rue Fusch in Liège, inside the botanical garden, now a public park. The arboretum, with its old trees, can be combined with them for a visit of an hour to an hour and a half. The association that runs the place offers guided tours, workshops, exhibitions and, every 1 May, a plant exchange; the September Heritage Days also draw visitors by reservation. Close by, the Aquarium-Muséum of the University of Liège makes a useful addition to the afternoon. The greenhouses remain accessible all year.