Several hundreds of tickets to visit the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken have unexpectedly been released over ten days after the event sold out. People who missed out during the first round may therefore still have a chance at getting a ticket.
The gardens and the greenhouses of the Royal Palace in the north of Brussels will be open to the public from 26 April to 20 May this year, corresponding to the flowering period.
Tickets for this rare occasion, which cost €6 and went on sale at 11:00 on 11 April, are necessary to enter the grounds. Every year they sell out quickly, and this year was no different.
Hoards of people rushed to the site even before tickets went on sale, resulting in the website's servers overloading on the first day. Many people had trouble buying their tickets as the booking webpage would not load.
Therefore, extra time slots were added for this edition, allowing for a total of 148,000 people – some 37,000 more than last year. Still, the tickets were all sold out after just three days.
Many were left disappointed, but now they have another chance at getting a ticket: people visiting the website this morning will see some spots have become available again, mostly at the end of April and on 17 days in May.
Inside one of the Royal Greenhouses. Credit: Belga / Hatim Kaghat
In total, around 500 extra tickets were released. These are reportedly time slots that were reserved in the system but not paid for.
At the entrance, visitors can opt for a 2 km tour (around 1.5 hours) – which focuses solely on the greenhouses, and which is the only tour available at night – or a longer 3 km walk (around 1.5 hours), which begins with a walk through the gardens of the Royal Estate, leaving time to admire a panoramic view of the greenhouses.
The walk then continues inside the glasshouses, taking visitors through the Congo Greenhouse, dedicated to subtropical plants; the Winter Garden, known for its tree ferns under the largest dome in the complex; and the Embarcadère, which was once used as a reception area for visitors.
