Toulouse Municipal Greenhouses (boulevard de la Marne)

The municipal greenhouses of Toulouse date from 1877, the year of the rotunda built under the direction of Pommard, whom the heritage record names as master builder. In 1893 two further wings, by Tartux, extended the complex.

The building originally stood in Toulouse's Jardin des Plantes. In the early twentieth century it was dismantled and rebuilt in the city's flower garden on boulevard de la Marne, where it still stands; the record does not give the exact date of the move.

The greenhouses have been listed as historic monuments since 16 June 1987 and belong to the municipality. They serve horticultural production: the Métropole's website describes a 2.3-hectare complex supplying 330,000 plants a year to embellish the city. According to a local press report, they opened to the public for the first time during the European Heritage Days; open-house days are now held there in spring.

The complex comprises a central rotunda extended by two wings: one perpendicular to the rotunda, the other ending in two hemicycles. The heritage record states that the building has a "double exposure" and is fitted with sun-protection blinds, intended to shield the plants from direct sunlight.

The dismantling and rebuilding of the whole in the early twentieth century, attested by the same record, shows the assembled nature of the construction: the structure could be moved from one garden to another without being destroyed.

The record gives neither dimensions nor materials. The Métropole's website says only that the horticultural complex covers 2.3 hectares; the glazed area is not documented in the sources consulted.

The greenhouses work as a production centre: the Métropole's website mentions 330,000 plants grown each year, in about 400 varieties or cultivars, intended to fill the city's public spaces with flowers. They also hold the national collection of violets, which yields 2,000 pots a year.

In the garden, wisteria more than a hundred years old has received the "Remarkable Tree" label; it covers a pergola over 30 metres long and provides shaded areas on open-house days.

The site is first of all a municipal horticultural production facility; the sources consulted describe no permanent public display and give no detailed list of the species grown under glass.

The greenhouses stand at 19 boulevard de la Marne, beside the Canal du Midi in Toulouse. They are not a continuously open attraction: the public is admitted on spring open-house days, whose dates are announced on the city's website and social media, and during the European Heritage Days. Activities then focus on ecology and gardening.

Allow one to two hours on site. The visit combines with a walk along the Canal du Midi and, to compare a production glasshouse with collection glasshouses, with the greenhouses of the Henri Gaussen botanical garden, also in Toulouse.