Royal Greenhouses: Winter Garden

The Royal Greenhouses of Laeken are a vast complex of monumental, heated greenhouses in the park of the Royal Castle of Laeken in Brussels. It is one of the major tourist attractions of the city. The complex was commissioned by King Leopold II of Belgium and designed by Alphonse Balat. Built between 1874 and 1895, the complex was finished with the completion of the so-called ‘Iron Church’, a domed greenhouse that would originally serve as the royal chapel. The total floor surface of this immense complex is 2.5 hectares.

The Royal Greenhouses are Balat’s most successful architectural project. It consists of a huge complex of several dome-shaped buildings in iron and glass, connected by glass-roofed galleries. The centrepiece is the domed ‘Winter Garden’ which is a circular interpretation of the Palm House of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Working with new materials like iron and glass, Balat was obliged to abandon his ‘classical’ stance. This stimulated the imagination of the architect. In the steel constructions, he introduced decorative motifs derived from plants and flowers. This formed the first step towards Art Nouveau architecture that was further developed by Victor Horta, who served as an apprentice of Balat.