A Visit to the Royal Palace

During the 19th century, progress in construction techniques, especially the use of metal and glass as construction materials, made a new type of building possible: the greenhouse.

Royal Greenhouses in Protected content

In Protected content , architect Alphonse Balat designed for King Leopold II a complex of greenhouses which complement the castle of Laeken, built in the classical style. The complex has the appearance of a glass city set in an undulating landscape.

The monumental pavilions, glass cupolas, wide arcades that cross the site like covered streets, are much more than an anecdote on the architectural applications of iron and glass or on little greenhouses of exotic plants. What the Royal Greenhouses express concerns architecture and, specifically, a major construction programme: the "Ideal Glass Palace".

They are the culmination of various meetings, letters, sketches and plans exchanged between architect Alphonse Balat and King Leopold II. But above all, they inspired the new Belgian architecture of the day, and their influence spread, with Art Nouveau, throughout the world.

The present-day plant collection at the Greenhouses inProtected content is valuable from three viewpoints :

Some of the plants belonging to King Leopold II's original collections still exist.
The current collections still respect the spirit that prevailed when the original collections were planted.
Finally, the Royal Greenhouses still contain an enormous number of rare and valuable plants.