Belfast Tropical Ravine

The Tropical Ravine features a sunken floor shielded by a glass roof that slopes downward into a shallow valley. Designed by Charles McKimm in eighteen eighty-nine, this structure houses plants from across the globe in a microclimate that mimics the tropics. During the Victorian era, botanists gathered here to study exotic ferns and orchids. Maintenance crews once found a Victorian-era coin lodged in the original drainage system during a recent restoration, hidden for over a century beneath the dense, humid foliage.