Walk inside the world's largest glass greenhouse
Guinness-listed, 2015
The Flower Dome is one of two cooled conservatories at Gardens by the Bay, a column-free glass shell over 1.2 hectares of Mediterranean and semi-arid planting.
Why it's unique
Guinness listed it in 2012 as the largest glass greenhouse in the world. The engineering claim is the column-free span: the roof is held by a gridshell rather than internal supports, which is why the space reads as one room rather than a series of bays.
The inversion is the point of visiting. A greenhouse almost everywhere else exists to keep tropical plants warm. On the equator it does the opposite — this one is refrigerated, so you walk out of Singapore's heat into olive trees, baobabs and Californian scrub. Next door the Cloud Forest does the same in reverse, growing a mountain's worth of highland species around a 35-metre indoor waterfall.
Before you go
Buy the combined Flower Dome and Cloud Forest ticket; almost nobody regrets it and the two are a five-minute walk apart.
Bring a layer. It is held at around 23 degrees and after an hour that stops feeling like relief. The Supertree Grove outside is free, and Garden Rhapsody, the light show, runs nightly at 7.45 and 8.45.