Old Town Roads

I once went on holiday to Croatia. I wanted to visit the place where they filmed Game of Thrones – the coastal city of King's Landing is actually filmed in Dubrovnik, in the south of Croatia. 

To cut a long story short, I went to the wrong place. There were no games, no thrones, and definitely no coast – but what I found instead was the beautiful old city of Zagreb. It had winding roads, narrow stone steps, tiny churches, grand cathedrals, and weird little shrines hidden beneath bridges. It was amazing, and I highly recommend you pester your family to take you there someday.

Lots of these old, beautiful towns exist in Europe (since Europe has been around for a very long time) but they often get forgotten, because many tourists would much rather visit places with beaches, swimming pools, and those drinks with tiny umbrellas. But Aventure Studios, the team behind this lovely build, would like you to reconsider your next holiday and head on over to Poland where the historic city of Torún is waiting for you.

Torún has a lot of similarities to Zagreb: the white-and-terracotta colours of the buildings, the spires of churches and clock towers, and the little plazas and squares where people gather for a lazy afternoon coffee. 

The medieval town of Torún is also known as the Gingerbread City – not because it's all made out of the tasty stuff (which would be a nightmare in the rain), but because its inhabitants have a traditional way of baking gingerbread. In fact, there's even a gingerbread museum in town where you can decorate (and eat) gingerbread yourself! 

But gingerbread isn't the only reason that Torún is famous. "Torún is one of the oldest cities in Poland," says Mateusz of Aventure Studios. "It's believed to be one of the most beautiful cities in Europe." The town is actually on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list thanks to its historical importance and that's actually how Aventure Studios came to build it – as part of the "Preserving World Heritage" contest on Planet Minecraft! Eagle-eyed readers may remember the Westminster Abbey build, made for the same contest!

A team of ten people from Aventure Studios took on the monumental task of recreating an entire town from scratch. It took the team 14 days to make it all and Mateusz says it was their "first ambitious project" as a group because they wanted to ensure that there were plenty of details in the build. They used Google Maps to make sure they were getting all the fiddly bits right: every window and tower had to look perfect!

But Minecraft comes with plenty of challenges for builders who want to recreate real-life architecture. "It was hard to use an ordinary colour palette," says Mateusz, "and it was challenging to keep the scale to make the build realistic."  But the most challenging thing wasn't the game itself – it was working in a team for the first time! 

"We had the goal to test ourselves as a freshly formed group," says Mateusz. "We wanted to see if we were able to compete with other, more experienced teams." Great news for Aventure Studios: their build won, ahead of 37 other entries! Not bad for their first team build – and now the town of Torún can add one more thing to its list of achievements!