Egzotarium Sosnowiec

[Jana]

The botanical garden in Polish town Sosnowiec built itself a new greenhouse called Egzotarium. Opened on 2th December 2023. Glass heavy, it has several floors and combines plant and animal exhibits. It has several larger fresh water tanks with tropical fish, reptiles (spacious tanks but only common species on show), few birds (grey parrots, toucans, great currasows), nine-banded armadillo and inverterbrates. Some older article mentioned also "small monkeys" but no monkeys seem to live there.

Link to website

Youtube video

This is probably the first paid animal attraction in Sosnowiec (town of 200k). The town has also a traditional Mini zoo in park Kuronia, that runs free of charge. But apart of barbary sheep and European fallow deer, it shows only domestic animals.

Edit: I found this pic taken short before opining of egzotarium. And its miniature parking lot shows the town doesnt expect much tourist traffic there. Strange investment.

 

[Arek]

This isn’t completely new facility. Egzotarium was opened in 1956. Under one roof two greenhouses , the third part is an aquarium (up to 40 species), in the fourth part there are several terrariums plus some aviaries (indoor and outdoor) for birds. The whole thing was very outdated. Redevelopment plans have been ready for several years and in 2020 it was it was closed, demolished and rebuilt. Opened a month ago, I had the opportunity to visit it 50 days before the official opening. Not all aquariums and terrariums were already inhabited. Of course this is much better than the old facility and well worth a visit if anyone is in this area (it’s only 10 km from Zoo Chorzów).

 

[Jana]

The egzotarium saw 61.642 visitors in the first two months of its operation. It´s more than I would expect.

Source

 

[Jana]

Egzotarium´s received two spectacled caimans from zoo Wroclaw.

Source

ZTL indicates that Wroclaw kept only 1.1 caimans of nominate subspecies (Caiman crocodilus crocodilus). If it´s correct, Wroclaw has no caimans left. While Egzotarium now has both nominate subspecies as well as animals without subspecies identification.