World’s largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium bursts in Berlin. A huge aquarium in Berlin has burst, spilling debris, water and hundreds of tropical fish out of the AquaDom tourist attraction in the heart of the German capital.
An aquarium in Berlin that was home to around 1,500 exotic fish burst early on Friday, prompting around 100 emergency responders to rush to the scene at an inner-city leisure complex, emergency services said.
Around 100 emergency responders rushed to the site, a leisure complex that also houses a Radisson hotel and a museum as well as the aquarium.
Sea Life Berlin offered glass elevator rides through the Aquadom aquarium, which it says was the world’s largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium at 14 metres (46 feet) in height.
Two people were injured by splinters of glass, and police evacuated the hotel in the complex on concern that there could be structural damage.
The website of the AquaDom described it as the biggest cylindrical tank in the world at 25 meters tall (82 feet tall), although Union Investment Real Estate clarified on Friday that the tank portion of the attraction had a height of 14 meters (46 feet).
Emergency services shut a major road next to the complex that leads from Alexanderplatz toward the Brandenburg Gate due to the large volume of water that had flooded out of the building.
The aquarium was last refurbished in 2020, according to the website of the DomAquaree complex. During the upgrading work, all the water was drained from the tank and the fish were moved to aquariums in the basement of the building, where there is a breeding care facility for the fish, it said.
