Christmas may be over but it’s still winter wonderland in this city
Christmas may be over but it’s still winter wonderland in this city
Plus 5 so-cold-it’s-cool ice homes and castles around the world
It’s a city that would conjure a thousand Elsa references — and Mulan too.
In scenes straight out of “Frozen,” the Harbin Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival opened the frosty doors of its ‘ice city’ this month to the public.
Now on its 33rd year, the festival features imposing sculptures and palaces fashioned out of more than 10 million cubic feet of ice and snow from the wintry wastes of Harbin, a Chinese city near the border of Mongolia and Siberia.
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Covering over eight million square feet, the attraction is divided into themed zones, a replica of a Chinese metropolis complete with ice castles, skyscrapers, and roads. The frosty scenes take on a particularly ethereal look at night with LED lights of various colours illuminating the displays.
The ice used for the structures was derived from the nearby Songhua River. Chiselers devoted months on end to cut the blocks of ice that would be used to build the ice city.
More than a million visitors brave the subzero temps in Harbin every year to gawk at the ice structures. With temperatures as gelid as negative 31 degrees Fahrenheit, the ice city is expected to avoid the thaw until February.
If you can’t make it to Harbin by then, you can visit these ice buildings around the world:
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Source: Property Report