Aquarium With Panoramic Elevator Bursts in Berlin

The giant aquarium in the lobby of the Radisson Collection Hotel in Berlin, containing 1 million liters of water and 1500 tropical fish, burst for an unknown reason on December 16, 2022, flooding the hotel and surrounding streets.

Opened in December 2003, the 25-meter-high AquaDom was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium”. The 11-meter cylindrical aquarium, built with 41 acrylic panels on the outside and 26 22 cm thick acrylic panels on the inside, also had a panoramic elevator open to tourists. In 2018, I also had the opportunity to visit the aquarium, which was home to 1,500 sea creatures from over 100 species at 22-27 degrees Celsius. According to reports at the time of its construction, the giant aquarium cost 12.8 million Euros.

For as yet unknown reasons, the aquarium exploded on December 16, 2022 at 05:45 a.m. The water from the aquarium overflowed the entire hotel lobby and the street, killing all the creatures in the aquarium. The only consolation was that the incident took place at a time closed to tourists in the early hours of the morning and while two people were injured, no casualties were reported. The Berlin Fire Brigade expressed that more than 100 officers responded to the incident and the cause of the explosion has not yet been identified.