I've stayed in some pretty swank hotels where you can sit serenely in an oh-so-chic lobby and enjoy people watching. That's nothing compared to this hotel in Berlin that offers guests the chance to sit serenely in their lobby looking at their spectacular aquarium filled with over 1,500 tropical fish.
A lobby/atrium with the world's largest cylindrical aquarium with over 260,000 gallons of water, 56 species of tropical fish and a mini reef as a base pretty much punks every other hotel lobby I've seen.
The Aquadom is located in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Berlin, which is conveniently right next door to the Sea Life Berlin Aquarium. The Aquarium manages the Aquadom — and even has two full time scuba divers in the tank caring for the fish and their habitat.
While hotel guests can't scuba dive in the tank they do have multiple ways to enjoy it. In addition to the view from the ground, visitors can ride an elevator up the center of the tube to a viewing platform located at just under the hotel's glass roof.
If you are a geek like me, while sitting in the atrium staring open-mouthed at the fish, you'll also be thinking about how they installed this insane attraction in the hotel.
Well, it turns out they didn't install the aquarium in the hotel — they built the hotel around the aquarium.
The tank is made of four pieces that sits on top of 30-feet of concrete as a foundation. Cranes hoisted the sections into place as the hotel was being built around it.
So if you are like me you'll go to see the schools of fish hanging around, but you'll stay to marvel over the engineering of it all. PHOTOS
Radisson Blu , via Inhabitat
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