6 Most Unusual Christmas Trees

Urban Christmas trees have long since stopped being just ordinary trees – with each New Year, the world sees more and more creative ideas for inventing a tree without leaving the forest. Various materials, shapes and structures – together with Ayrat Bagautdinov, founder of the educational project 'Moscow Through an Engineer's Eyes', we have selected several unusual trees that have ever appeared in the world.

Ay rat Bagautdinov
Engineer-Builder by education, historian and teacher by soul. Leads tours, gives lectures for adults and organizes engaging lessons for children and teenagers.

1. Hi-tech tree in Brussels

A 24-meter metal structure was covered with wood and canvas, decorated with garlands and LED lights. A viewing platform was opened at the top offering a view of the Belgian capital.

In the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, they welcomed 2012 with an ecological tree made from 40,000 recycled plastic bottles. The height of the 'tree' was 13 meters.

In Italy, on the mountainside of Indino, where the commune of Gubbio is located, a giant installation in the shape of a festive tree shines. The tree is assembled every Christmas for several decades now. Its height reaches over 650 meters. Just one star made of 200 light bulbs at the top covers an area of 1000 square meters. In 1991, the tree in Gubbio was listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

Glass products made on the Venetian island of Murano are considered the most expensive in the world. A Christmas tree made from this glass, 8.5 meters tall, weighs 3 tons.

In the Mexican city of Puebla, the Christmas tree lights up only if someone pedals. The more cyclists there are – the brighter it glows.

Artist Anthony Schmitt decorated the Santa Monica shopping center with a ten-meter tree made of shopping carts. Creating this structure required 86 metal baskets. This is not the first 'basket tree' by Anthony; he has been collecting them since 2007.