SAYN CASTLE BUTTERFLY GARDEN

OR THE FAIRYTALE OF 1001 BUTTERFLIES

The Sayn Castle Butterfly Garden lies nestled in the romantic Sayn Castle park with its old giant trees, ponds and streams. The small paradise, founded in 1987 by Princess Gabriela zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, attracts tens of thousands of enthusiastic visitors to historic Sayn year after year.

You can admire the myriad of colourful tropical butterflies up close in the butterfly garden housed in two glassed halls. Dwarf quails with tiny chicks the size of a bumblebee, turtles, Japanese koi, tropical finches as well as the mysterious green iguana all live in this exotic Garden of Eden.

The iridescent Blue Morpho, a tropical butterfly from Central and South America, enchants all visitors as it glides majestically through the garden. The giant Atlas moth from South-East Asia is another fascinating sight, with its impressive wingspan of up to 32 cm. However, this giant dies just a few days after hatching from its cocoon. That makes it all the more special to experience it. Its ever-hungry caterpillars, which grow a good 10 cm long in the course of their caterpillar life, are no less worth seeing, however.

What would a tropical garden and all its magnificent butterflies from Asia, Africa and the Americas be without exotic foliage to complete the landscape? Impressive banana plants, delicate orchids, golden fruit palms, hibiscus or coral shrubs give visitors a holiday feeling too.

This enchanting fairy tale of a thousand and one butterflies is there for you to experience every day during the season – and the fairy tales continue. Because your ticket also entitles you to visit the New Museum in Sayn Castle right next door. As well as the thrilling stories about the two grandes dames of the royal family, the Russian Princess Leonilla (1816-1918) and the Salzburg-born Princess Marianne (*1919), their wedding dresses are also on display there. Princess Gabriela presents artistic representations of butterflies in the butterfly cabinet and also relates interesting facts about nature and native butterflies. This forms the bridge to the butterfly garden in the castle park.