New Orangery, Royal Garden of Prague Castle (Nová oranžerie)

Prague Castle's Royal Garden had an orangery for tender plants as early as the 16th century. According to Czech Wikipedia, this Renaissance building, attributed to the architect Bonifác Wolmut, combined stone walls with a removable roof and sheltered citrus, pomegranates and laurels. Under Emperor Rudolf II the site was still given over to citrus and warm-climate plants. The same source says the orangery was devastated by Saxon and Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War, while the magazine Země světa reports that oranges were grown there until the First World War.

After the Second World War an ordinary greenhouse was built against the old retaining wall. By the 1990s, during Václav Havel's presidency, it was in very poor condition. Olga Havlová, the president's wife, championed the idea of a new orangery and approached the Canadian philanthropist Jennifer Allen Simmons, who contributed to its funding.

The Prague Castle Administration had the building put up between 1999 and 2001 to designs by the Czech-British architect Eva Jiřičná and Petr Vágner, although the Open Gardens Weekend website gives the dates as 1995-1999. It is the most recent building in the Royal Garden. The parks and gardens department of the Castle Administration runs it, and the architect herself has led tours there during Architecture Day.

The design had to meet two constraints: keep the footprint of the previous building and put no new load on the fragile Renaissance retaining wall. The architects therefore placed a steel lattice beam in front of the wall to carry a net of welded stainless-steel tubes, bent into a half-cylinder and joined with purpose-made connectors. This diagonal mesh is stiffened by the glazed walls.

Walls and roof are made of double-layer toughened glass panels sealed with silicone. Published lengths vary from 84.5 metres to about 100 metres; most sources give nearly 90 metres. Glass partitions divide the interior into three sectors whose climates are controlled separately. A computer system runs heating, vent opening, blinds, irrigation and lighting from sensor readings, which is why the glasshouse is often likened to one large machine.

Inside, fragments of the Renaissance wall survive, together with two fountains, one designed by Jože Plečnik and the other by Otto Rothmayer with a sculpture by Bedřich Stefan.

The New Orangery is not a display house but a working glasshouse serving the Castle. It raises heat-loving plants, citrus, exotic species and houseplants. Some of them decorate the Castle's state rooms; after their spell indoors, the plants return to the central zone of the glasshouse to recover. The rear sector is fitted with growing tables for small flowering plants.

Pineapples also bear fruit here, and their appeal is one of the reasons the Castle gives for limiting visits, since there are not enough staff to keep visitors' hands off the crops. From May to September some of the plants are moved outdoors and displayed around the orangery.

The orangery stands in the Royal Garden, next to the Ball Game Hall (Míčovna) and on the edge of the Stag Moat. Its interior is normally closed: it opens only on rare occasions, notably during the Open Gardens Weekend (Víkend otevřených zahrad) in June, on Architecture Day (Den architektury) or on guided walks run by the Castle Administration. At other times the long glass vault can be seen from the path above the Stag Moat, between the Ball Game Hall and the Royal Summer Palace (Belvedere). A walk past it combines easily with the Royal Garden and the Castle courtyards.