A church built entirely of ice and snow has opened in Bavaria – a hundred years after locals first built a snow church as an act of protest.
The church at Mitterfirmiansreut, near the border with the Czech Republic, is more than 20 metres long with an 8 metre steeple and took 1,400 cubic metres (49,000 cubic feet) of snow to complete.
The structure was lit up blue with a blessing from local Dean Kajetan Steinbeisser.
But when the ancestors of today’s villagers built the first snow church in 1911, they were protesting because they didn’t have their own church there