Rio de Janeiro becomes a district of Hamburg – Miniatur Wunderland opens new bridge and a new section

After four years of work on two continents in the midst of a global pandemic, over 60,000 working hours and almost 1,500,000 euros in construction costs, the new Rio section in Miniatur Wunderland was opened today at 11:12 am. The 46 square meter section is the first section in the new storage block L, which was ceremoniously inaugurated together with Rio by Hamburg‘s First Mayor Dr. Peter Tschentscher and Brazil‘s Ambassador Roberto Jaguaribe. This moment is special for the Wunderland in many ways: „We spent four years building this fantastic little section under adverse conditions. But for us, it doesn‘t feel like we‘re done now, but rather like things are just getting started. With the additional 3,000 square meters, we now have room to let off steam creatively for at least 10 years and build many more fantastic worlds,“ says Wunderland founder Frederik Braun, describing his emotional state.

With the opening of the new section, the canal bridge and, on the other side, the new exhibition area in Block L of Hamburg‘s Speicherstadt will go into operation at the same time. Planning and construction work on the expansion has taken more than ten years. „It‘s been over a decade since we first talked to HHLA about our expansion dreams. This gave rise to the crazy idea of the bridge that would take small trains and people across the canal into a new world. The fact that this vision has now become reality still feels quite unreal to me and is simply wonderful,“ explains Gerrit Braun.

There was no more room for new worlds in the existing Wunderland premises. Block L adds 3,000 square meters of exhibition space to the world‘s largest model railroad layout and the expansion is secured for at least another ten years. The Rio section is the first of four South America sections that the model builders of Miniatur Wunderland are building simultaneously with the Martinez model building family in Argentina and Hamburg. A feature film about this unusual collaboration will be released in late 2022, produced by the makers of the globally successful Michael Schumacher documentary. „We met the Martinez family four years ago in New York, and moments later the crazy idea of building South America together with South Americans in part in South America was born. Kindred spirits seem to exist, as a similar loving, nerdy, crazy and very dedicated way of thinking and working connected us from the first moment on and never faded over the course of the last four years. It was a great adventure, not the least due to the Covid pandemic. But when you stand in front of Rio now, you immediately realize that this co-production has created something fantastically unique – a truly new world,“ describes Frederik Braun.

Corona was a great challenge for this emotional project. Many Wunderlanders spent the first year of construction together with the Martinez family in Buenos Aires. Due to the pandemic, the Wunderland team had to be flown out head over heels in February 2020. Without further ado, Team Martinez continued to build alone and was accompanied from Hamburg with hundreds of Skype phone calls. Almost a year ago, Rio de Janeiro came to Hamburg by ship and was completed by Team Wunderland in thousands of hours. An intercontinental masterpiece had been created.