Underwater Palace

Being underwater makes everything just a bit more mysterious, probably because of the muted colours and muffled sounds. But there has to be a better way to experience this than getting all wet! Luckily, CorgiFalcon has found it, with the solution of building a whole palace under the sea.

Amazingly, he made the entire place by hand, including painstakingly drying everything out so that his guests wouldn’t have to swim, and leaving no dampness behind. While many builders use programs like WorldEdit to make their job easier, CorgiFalcon went right ahead with his own determination. “It really never occurred as a possibility to me,” he says, of using an external program to help with such an ambitious underwater construction. “Still, I think that it makes the build more impressive to think that every single block was dug, emptied, or placed by hand.”

Things got easier after this first stage, and CorgiFalcon moved on to making a garden, and then the beautiful palace itself. Finally, he added a secret basement – a vault full of glittering treasures. “I had to hollow out almost all the area under the palace and the garden, and then I built the vault under that,” he explains to me.

The vault is my favourite part; I really like all the different coloured blocks piled up as if there were a thousand gemstones scattered on the floor. CorgiFalcon has his own preference, though. “My overall favourite detail is the use of barriers to keep the water out, but still enable you to see into the ocean,” he says. Perfect for lounging around and seeing which sea creatures go by – I’ve spotted a couple of adorable turtles in these screenshots!

CorgiFalcon also says that he really likes “the huge stone statues standing guard” over the vault – rather intimidatingly, if you ask me. I can just imagine them coming to life to stop anyone trying to break in and steal the treasure…

There’s also some neat decoration throughout the build for those who keep their eyes peeled. “There's a repeating motif of a yellow, blue, red, and green square – it's on the front of the palace, and is also inside the vault entrance twice,” he tells me. The whole palace is very colourful, from the orange and purple sofas in the lounge to the sculptures in the garden, a great contrast from the dark blue water hanging all around just outside the windows.

CorgiFalcon tells me that he was inspired by a YouTuber called Grian, who had a similar idea of building an underwater base. But stuffing it with jewels was his own twist. “In fantasy novels, there are often huge stashes of treasure in these hidden vaults, and I wanted to try to emulate that,” he says.

Now that the palace and its vault are finished, he plans to continue building in this same world. “Right now I'm building a town on the islands close by,” he tells me. “I've considered building something and creating an in-universe history for it, which I feel could be an interesting combination of creative writing and Minecraft building.”

It sounds like this palace could be the beginning of a whole fantasy universe! Maybe there will be a story where statues will come to life after all, so you’d better be good and stick to enjoying the palace and the views of the ocean. No sneaking into the vault to make off with the treasure!