Fondovaya Orangery (Collections Orangery), Tsitsin Main Botanical Garden

The Main Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences was founded on 14 April 1945 in northern Moscow, with Nikolai Tsitsin as its first director; it now bears his name. Its glasshouse collections are a direct product of the post-war years. From October 1945 to August 1949 a group of botanists led by Academician P. A. Baranov, working from a temporary base at Sanssouci near Potsdam, gathered more than 15,000 greenhouse plants. The first 'botanical train', 48 wagons carrying 10,660 tropical plants, among them over 300 large specimens (palms, conifers and citrus trees 3.5 to 9 metres tall), left for Moscow on 25 August 1946. Wikipedia dates to 1947 the arrival of the core of the orchid collection, also from Sanssouci.

The orangery built to receive these plants went up between 1945 and 1953, using structures dismantled in Germany as war reparations, and stayed continuously open to the public from 1953. Expeditions to India (1961) and to the countries of the Indian Ocean basin (1981) later enlarged the collections. On 13 December 2021 the building, judged to be in a critical state, closed for works announced to last about three years and intended to extend its life by 50 to 60 years. The exhibition halls reopened to visitors on 24 May 2023, according to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, although the garden's website still lists the administrative block as closed.

A new orangery was begun in 1992. Work stopped, resumed in 2002 and was completed in early 2016, according to Wikipedia. Plants started moving into it as early as 2009, but the building serves as a scientific base and remains closed to visitors.

The old orangery was assembled from components brought from Germany: its metal frames, doors and pipework are all of German manufacture, and some wooden doors had gone seventy years without restoration. The interior is divided into 19 sections with distinct tropical and subtropical climates: five exhibition sections, arranged on a geographical principle, and fourteen collection sections reserved for scientific work. The programme launched in 2021 covered the walls, water supply and heating, with the aim of automatic control of temperature and humidity that would turn the halls into 'smart' greenhouses.

The new orangery, about 150 metres from the old one, rises 33.6 metres and covers nearly 9,000 m². Its envelope of energy-saving double glazing sits on a metal frame, and its design involved institutes from Russia and Finland. It comprises three blocks of different sizes: one for administrative, technical and scientific spaces, a tropical block devoted to rainforest and aquatic plants, and a subtropical block split into wet and dry zones. Automated climate control, water purification, artificial rain and misting reproduce natural conditions inside.

The old orangery holds more than 7,000 taxa represented by some 25,000 specimens, about 40 per cent of the garden's holdings: orchids, palms, cycads, citrus, azaleas, bromeliads, aroids, ferns, cacti and other succulents. According to T-Journal, some 300 large trees brought from Germany still grow there, among sugar cane, bananas and papayas. The five sections open to visitors begin with the tropics of the Old and New Worlds, with a collection of figs and epiphytes, followed by the dry subtropics, where Mediterranean, American, African and Australian plants grow alongside succulents. Three humid subtropical sections complete the route: flora of southern Africa, South America and East Asia with cycads, then rhododendrons and Japanese camellias, and finally plants from Australia and New Zealand.

According to Wikipedia, the garden's orchid collection numbers 1,120 species, subspecies and forms from 222 genera, plus 300 hybrids. In the new orangery, which is closed to the public, three large basins hold mangroves, water lilies, lotuses and Victoria, alongside more than 50 species of passion flower.

The orangery stands on Botanicheskaya Street, on the edge of the Main Botanical Garden, which covers 361 hectares in the north of Moscow. Only the old orangery can be visited: entry is self-guided with a ticket, and at weekends guided tours leave at set times. Groups can book themed excursions on subjects such as useful plants, medicinal and poisonous plants, ferns and conifers, ancient and long-lived plants, or plants in myths and legends. Phone photography is allowed, while tripods and lighting need prior agreement. Open all year, the orangery makes a good winter outing; in the warmer months it pairs well with the garden's Japanese garden, rose garden and arboretum.