Palmehuset

The University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden traces its origins to the Hortus Medicus given by Christian IV in 1600; it is the fourth, and the only surviving, of the university's successive botanic gardens. In the early 1870s it was moved to the former ramparts of the city's demolished fortifications, laid out by the landscape gardener Henrik August Flindt with gracefully curving paths. The garden opened in 1874.

The large glasshouse complex at its heart was built between 1872 and 1874. The brewer J. C. Jacobsen, founder of Carlsberg, was one of its main promoters: he took part in its design and presented it to the university in 1874. The plans were drawn by Peter Christian Bønecke, the city architect, who like Jacobsen took inspiration from the Crystal Palace built in London for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The garden and its glasshouses were listed in 1977. Between 2010 and 2012 a landscape restoration funded by the A.P. Møller Foundation reinstated the curving 1874 layout of the paths leading to the Palm House. The 150th anniversary in 2024 launched a new campaign on the building itself: repainting the ironwork, replacing sunshades, repairing masonry, cleaning the glass and upgrading technical systems. Carried out in stages, the works involve partial closures, notably of the warm subtropics section, ahead of the new Natural History Museum of Denmark building, due to open in spring 2027.

The glasshouse complex covers about 3,000 m² and is among the great cast-iron-and-glass structures of northern Europe. At its centre the Palm House proper rises beneath a broad dome to a height of 16 metres. Narrow cast-iron spiral stairs lead up to a high gallery that looks down onto the palm canopy.

Around the central volume, wings and annexes divide the plants into seven settings: aquatic plants and mangrove, warm subtropics, tropical rainforest, dry tropics, a Mediterranean house, a succulent house and a butterfly house. The complex is part of a wider group of some 27 glasshouses across the garden, which house cacti, orchids and begonias among other collections.

The Palm House holds a collection of cycads described as unusually large and scientifically important; one of them, in the collection since 1824, is among the tallest grown under glass in Europe, and several are more than a century old. Other highlights include fig trees, the oldest dating from the 1860s, the giant bamboo Dendrocalamus giganteus, which can grow 40 cm a day and once pushed through the roof, and a Wollemi pine, a conifer discovered in an Australian gorge in 1994.

The other sections show mangrove and aquatic plants, carnivorous plants, Mediterranean vegetation and a substantial succulent collection that includes large Mexican cacti. In the Butterfly House, butterflies fly among passion flowers and pineapple plants. The garden as a whole, covering about ten hectares, holds more than 13,000 species.

The Palm House stands at the heart of the Botanical Garden in central Copenhagen, close to Nørreport station. Entry to the glasshouse is by ticket, which includes the Butterfly House, and booking a time slot is recommended. During the renovation campaign some sections may be closed. The climb up the spiral stair to the upper gallery is worth making. A visit combines well with a walk through the garden and with the neighbouring Statens Museum for Kunst and Rosenborg Castle.