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Mini-Europe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mini-Europe is a part of Heysel in Brussels, Belgium that contains replicas of famous buildings from countries in the European Union, presented at a scale of 1 to 25. The buildings on display are famed for their exquisite detail, which took over €75,000 per model to reproduce.
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In 1987, several art historians selected over 100 European buildings of cultural importance; it was from this list that many of the models at Mini-Europe come. On-site work to take detailed photographs of the buildings cost over €200,000, and sometimes it took multiple trips to garner enough details to make and appropriate 1:25 scale model.
To build the models, 55 workshops from 9 member states collaborated to construct pre-models out of a variety of materials. These pre-models were then used to create moulds, which led to the final model, cast from epoxy or polyester. Finally, the models were painted. All told, this process was extremely labour-intensive, requiring, for example, over 24,000 hours for the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.