Palmengarten

The Palmengarten grew out of an opportunity seized by Frankfurt's citizens after Prussia annexed the Duchy of Nassau in 1866. The deposed Duke Adolph parted with the collections from his winter gardens at Biebrich Palace. In 1868 the garden designer Heinrich Siesmayer, backed by leading citizens including the banker and publisher Leopold Sonnemann, founder of the Frankfurter Zeitung, arranged their purchase. A joint-stock company was set up, the shares were quickly taken up, and the Palmengarten-Gesellschaft was formally established in May 1869.

The Palm House opened in November 1869, before the garden itself, and a first flower show was held in 1870. The official inauguration took place on 16 March 1871 in the presence of the Crown Prince of Prussia. Siesmayer, who laid out the grounds after English and French models, remained in charge until 1886; his successor August Siebert went on to develop the site for some forty years.

When costs outgrew the company's means, the City of Frankfurt took over on 1 June 1931. Air raids in September 1944 burned the west wing of the Gesellschaftshaus and shattered every pane in the glasshouses. The American army then occupied the grounds as a recreation centre, and according to the garden's own history they returned to the city in 1953. The Tropicarium was built in the 1980s, the restored Palm House reopened in 1999, the Gesellschaftshaus was restored to plans by David Chipperfield in 2012, and a Flower and Butterfly House opened in 2021.

The iron-and-glass Palm House is 52.6 metres long, 30.5 metres wide and 18.5 metres high at its apex. Its structure is based on a patented system shown at the 1867 Paris Exposition, which frees the interior of load-bearing columns. Inside, the planting is staged as a landscape with a terrace, a water wall and fish pool, a grotto and a small stream.

The Tropicarium, built between 1984 and 1987 according to architectural records (some sources give 1992 for its inauguration), is a group of glasshouses on an octagonal plan. The garden counts fourteen houses of varying size, the tallest reaching 15 metres, covering more than 5,000 square metres. The north wing is devoted to the humid tropics and the south wing to arid tropical regions. A technical upgrade costing more than 8 million euros, focused on energy efficiency, was approved in the late 2010s, with work planned in phases so the complex could stay open.

The garden also has a Subantarctic House, alpine houses, an entrance display house and the 2021 Flower and Butterfly House, a free-standing hall with around 800 square metres of exhibition space.

Around 13,000 species are grown across the site. The Palm House brings together Washingtonia, fishtail and betel nut palms, Chamaedorea, araucarias and tree ferns. In the Tropicarium a round-the-world route leads from the cacti, Welwitschia mirabilis and baobabs of the dry zones to the bromeliads, orchids, giant bamboo and mangroves of the wet tropics.

The Subantarctic House presents the flora of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands and New Zealand's South Island, including the Chilean bellflower and Patagonian cypress. The entrance display house shows carnivorous plants and tillandsias, while the Flower and Butterfly House is devoted to pollination, with butterfly pupae on view.

The Palmengarten covers some twenty hectares in the Westend district and, together with the neighbouring university botanical garden and Grüneburgpark, forms the largest green space close to central Frankfurt. The glasshouses make it a good choice in any weather, and half a day is barely enough for the Palm House, the Tropicarium and the outdoor gardens. Two fixtures mark the calendar: the Rose and Light Festival, held since 1931, and the summer concerts of Jazz im Palmengarten, launched in 1959 and billed as Germany's longest-running uninterrupted open-air concert series.