Flora und Botanischer Garten Köln, Botanical garden in Riehl, Cologne, Germany.
Flora und Botanischer Garten Köln is Cologne's municipal botanical garden in Riehl, covering over 11 hectares after several expansions. Its centrepiece is the Flora festival hall, a cast-iron and glass winter garden 57 metres long, 22.5 metres wide and 18 metres high, modelled on London's Crystal Palace and the Paris Jardin d'hiver. In front of it, a parterre inspired by French Baroque gardens surrounds a circular stone-rimmed basin with a fountain, and a five-step water cascade with parallel pergolas follows Italian Renaissance models.
The garden was planned from 1862, when Cologne citizens founded a committee to replace the old botanical garden near the cathedral, which had been cleared for the main railway station. The Flora AG, capitalised at 100,000 thalers, bought a 5.6-hectare site in Riehl next to the zoo. Peter Joseph Lenné, then 73, designed the mixed German style layout, executed by his pupil Julius Niepraschk. It opened on 14 August 1864 with a concert and fireworks.
The garden's name comes from Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and its festival hall of the same name hosted concerts and balls; the 1898 concert hall added to it held 2,457 people, making it Cologne's largest hall. The 1906 Frauen-Rosenhof, a sandstone Art Nouveau garden by Joseph Maria Olbrich, survives from the Deutsche Kunstausstellung.
Entry is free all year and the paths lead through different climate zones from open ground to the tropical glasshouses. Spring and autumn work well for a visit, when many plants bloom or change color.
The garden's oldest trees date to its founding: more than 60 specimens have been designated natural monuments. Among the themed sections are a heather garden, a fern garden, a fragrance garden and a medicinal plant garden, plus a farmer's garden of local crops.
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