The largest ancient palatial structure in the world was the bold choice for sand sculptor Zhang Weikang (pictured) who created some of the complex sand sculptures on display at the Yokohama Sand Art Exhibition held in 2014. Producer and sand sculptor Katsuhiko Chaen invited artists from around the world to recreate UNESCO World Heritage and other historic buildings in China, Japan and South Korea, including Beijing’s sprawling Forbidden City.
Inspired by the Middle Eastern folktale collection, One Thousand and One Nights, this epic sand “village” was on display at the Remal International Festival in Kuwait in 2014. The magical world reportedly covered an area of 322,917 square feet (30,000sqm) and used more than 31,000 tonnes of sand. As well as grand domed palaces, minarets and traditional little villages, the sprawling artwork included fearsome snakes, a giant genie and gruesome skeletons. Lit up at the night, it was even more enchanting.
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The capital of the UK’s sand art scene has to be the North Somerset seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, which started hosting an annual sand sculpture festival in 2006. Each year's event has a different theme with a public vote to decide the winning artwork. This was the 2017 winner, created by Edith van de Wetering under the theme Topsy Turvy. Titled Your Place Or Mine, the sand artwork shows two frogs with cities in their mouths and a tongue bridge connecting them. The festival has been postponed for the last two summers.
Around 5,000 tonnes of beach sand were used by 20 international artists who gathered at the Somerset beach to create sculptures based around a theme of Once Upon a Time at the 2014 Weston-super-Mare Sand Sculpture Festival. Pictured here is a giant Gulliver and the Lilliputians from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels – it was one of the largest displays at the festival and was the work of Radovan Zivny from the Czech Republic.
Incredible creations such as this one can be seen at the annual Fulong International Sand Sculpture Art Festival in Taiwan, which is usually held each April. With a lovely long stretch of sugar-soft sand, Fulong Beach in north-east Taiwan is a prime spot for sandcastle enthusiasts – it was selected as the location for the open-air sand art gallery after the World Sand Sculpting Academy (WSSA) evaluated its sands as the most suitable place for sand sculpting on the island.
The mesmerising Circles in the Sand have appeared at Face Rock Viewpoint in Bandon, Oregon since 2015, when artist Denny Dyke first began creating the labyrinths – or “dreamfields” as he calls them – at low tide. Along with a team of volunteers, he creates the intricate “draws” over a period of two hours. When the work is finished people are allowed in to follow the sandy pathways before the tide washes them away.
More competitive sand sculpting takes place at the Revere Beach National Sand Sculpting Festival which is held on the sands that overlook Massachusetts Bay. The world’s best sand sculptors converge at the beach, just north of Boston, during the annual event to compete for cash prizes. Pictured here is Benjamin Probanza’s Escuchando La Vida Y La Muerte (Listening to Life and Death) from the 2013 event. The artist from Acapulco, Mexico, won third prize for this thought-provoking piece that was painstakingly carved in an exact mirror image on the other side.
Filmmaker Danny Boyle’s Armistice beach memorial Pages of the Sea was one of the nationwide visual arts projects of remembrance commissioned for the centenary of Armistice Day (the end of the First World War) on 11 November 2018. The striking visual arts project saw large-scale portraits carved into the sand on 32 beaches around the country – pictured here is a portrait drawn on Downhill Beach, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, of British Army staff nurse Rachel Ferguson who lost her life in Bordighera, Italy, in 1918. The portraits were chosen by Boyle to tell the stories of the ordinary people who gave their lives to the war effort.
Poignant portraits of soldiers from the First World War appeared on the beaches of Cornwall as part of the Armistice Day event too – pictured here is Lieutenant Richard Charles Graves-Sawle on Porthcurno Beach. He was in the Coldstream Guards and grew up in Cornwall. He died in 1914, aged 26, near Ypres. The short-lived artworks, which were designed by the sand artists collective Sand in Your Eyes, were created at low tide and only lasted until high tide, representing the fleeting nature of life.
The annual appearance of the Hiekkalinna, or Lappeenranta Sandcastle, is a highly anticipated event in the Finnish city on the banks of Lake Saimaa, the largest lake in Finland. This is the elaborate creation from 2014, which was created by a collective of sand artists. Since 2004, a giant castle has been carved at the end of Linnoitusniemi Cape from millions of kilos of sand with themes ranging from pirates and knights to historic events. The sandcastle area also has rides and family activities.
Nobody likes sandy bed sheets, but that was par for the course for anyone checking in to the world’s first sand hotel, which was built on Weymouth Beach in Dorset. Guests were able to book the room (which had one double and a single bed) for £10 per night for one week in the summer of 2008. It was part of a campaign by laterooms.com to highlight the appeal of a British seaside beach holiday and took 1,000 tonnes of sand to build.
The Dutch took the idea a few steps further in 2015 by building real-life sandcastle hotels complete with multiple rooms, Wi-Fi, windows and roofs. Constructed from tonnes of sand and reinforced with the help of some wood, the hotels opened in the cities of Oss in the province of Brabant and Sneek in Friesland, both of which host annual sand sculpture contests. Guests could stay inside the rooms, which were hidden inside huge and elaborate castle sculptures, for €150 euros (£130) per night. The temporary structures were inspired by Scandinavia’s Ice Hotels.
Mythical creatures, fearsome rulers and ancient architecture are just some of the amazing structures that have been on show at the Sand Sculpture Festival, which is usually held annually on Lara Beach in Antalya, Turkey. Pictured here is a model inspired by the Mughal Empire, created by sand artist Jan Zelinka in 2013.
Sand art meets augmented reality technology at Sculpting Australia and Boneo Discovery Park’s ANIMALIA IN SAND exhibition in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. The park has 26 whopping sand sculptures, showing scenes from Graeme Base’s classic children’s illustrated book, Animalia, that were crafted by a range of international sand sculptors. Each piece comes to life as viewers use an app to experience a 3-D animal animation.
Most years, serious sandcastle builders battle it out to build the tallest sandcastle in the world and make it into the Guinness Book of World Records. This mighty monument was constructed in Duisburg, in Germany's Rhineland region in 2017 and beat the previous world record by six feet (1.84m). The soaring Sandburg, which was commissioned by a local travel agency, took 19 artists three weeks to build and was made from 3,500 tonnes of sand. It was 55 feet (17m) high.
2019’s record-breaking creation was constructed in Binz on the German island of Rügen as part of its annual sand sculpture festival. It measured over 57 feet (17.66m) with a base diameter of around 85 feet (26m). Led by sand sculpting enthusiast Thomas van den Dungen, a team of 12 sculptors and eight technicians worked with over 1,000 tonnes of sand for three and a half weeks to build the mighty fortress at the 2019 Sandfest Rügen.
But the German’s world sandcastle domination was soon to crumble away. They were pipped to the post in 2021 by Dutch designer Wilfred Stijger who constructed the world's tallest sand sculpture in Blokhus, Denmark. Towering above the little seaside town at just over 69-feet (21.16m) high, the intricate castle is more than 10 feet (3m) taller than the 2019 record-breaker. Rather fittingly, at the top of the pyramid-like structure, which took 4,860 tonnes of sand to make, is a model of coronavirus wearing a crown, representing the virus’ control over our lives.
Every year on the golden beach of Las Canteras, Gran Canaria, talented sand artists work tirelessly to create a spectacular nativity scene. The tradition, which began in 2006, attracts visitors from all over the world, with the sand sculptures usually being completed in early December and staying up until early January. Pictured is the sculpture from 2012.