A young nun breathed deeply as she peered up at a statue of an angel bathed in softly colored light streaming through a church, and as she exhaled, you could see her breath.
Instead of wood or bricks and mortar, the chilly house of worship perched among the snowy peaks of Slovakia’s High Tatra Mountains has been built from massive crystal-clear blocks of ice.
At 1,285m above sea level, the ice replica of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome is higher than any of Slovakia’s 4,158 churches, more than half of them Roman Catholic.
Photo: AFP
Although it has not been consecrated, another visitor, Zlatica Janakova from southern Slovakia, said it feels like a real church.
“It’s so good for your soul; it provides you with tranquility,” she said. “All of nature is inside and around this temple,” she added, gazing at the surrounding alpine vistas.
Englishman Martin, who declined to give his surname, described it as a “beautiful, religious place, so peaceful and calm.”
Since 2013, ice sculptors have flocked to the Slovak Tatra mountain hamlet of Hrebienok every winter to build a Tatra Ice Temple, or scaled-down replica of a famous church using only crystal-clear ice blocks.
This year, it is an 11m tall version of the 16th-century Vatican basilica, complete with the imposing two half-circle wings of Bernini’s colonnade.
A quarter of a million tourists last year took the short funicular ride up the mountain to see the ice replica of Barcelona’s soaring and intricate Sagrada Familia.
A team of 16 sculptors from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Wales and the US worked 12 hours a day for a month to create this year’s ice temple.
On Sundays, the venue vibrates with the sounds of sacred music concerts.
“I’m glad to see people crossing themselves and praying inside,” Slovak chief sculptor Adam Bakos said.
The interior boasts sculptures modeled on the works of Italian masters side by side with those of chamois, marmots and other wildlife native to the High Tatras.
“I gave them a free hand with the decoration, so each artist added their signature style to the sculptures,” Bakos said.
Slovak-Greek artist Achilleas Sdoukos designed and produced stained-glass decorations incorporated into the temple’s icy walls.
The building material, namely 1,880 ice blocks weighing a total of 225 tonnes, was imported from Poland.
“We tried different suppliers, from the Netherlands, England, Norway and Hungary, but Polish ice seemed to have the highest quality, it really looks like glass if kept cold enough,” said Rastislav Kromka, technical director of the Tatra Ice Temple.
With an unusually warm winter threatening to melt details on their sculpture, Bakos and his team covered it with a geodesic dome, measuring 25m in diameter.
They also installed refrigeration units to ensure a bone-chilling minus-10°C to keep the ice solid.
“Cold wind was blowing in our faces from the AC all day long. It was like a chopper ride in January. Once we were done, I didn’t even want to open the freezer at home anymore,” Bakos joked.
More than 15 carpenters helped sculptors with the demanding task of stacking the ice blocks, each weighing 125kg.
“It took us more time to stack the blocks than to carve them,” Bakos said. “Ice is also an extremely fragile material, you must be very gentle with it or details tend to fall off. We used only water to glue the pieces together,” he said.
Visiting the ice temple is free. It is funded by the Tatra tourism organization, the transport and construction ministry and other partners.
Only cold air and water are used to maintain the ice church.
“It is not only that visitors touch the walls of the temple, they also breathe out warm air and come in sipping hot tea,” Kromka said.
When winter is over, the ice structure is smashed to pieces, the cooling system switched off and the ice carried outside to melt on the ground.
Open annually from November until late April, the ice temple is also becoming a hotspot for destination weddings.
“Here ... we are perhaps the closest to our spiritual selves and our respective religions,” said Veronika Littvova, head of tourism for the High Tatra region.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number