Residents of the small Bavarian town of Mitterfirmiansreut have built a church out of ice and snow on the same spot where another ice church was constructed 100 years ago by villagers looking for a place to worship.
The temporary ice church, dubbed ''God's Igloo'' by one German newspaper, was blessed by a Catholic priest this week, Spiegel International Online reports.
Residents had hoped to open the $US200,000 church for Christmas, but were hampered by unseasonably warm weather and a lack of snow.
The first ice church was built by mountain villagers who had to travel 90 minutes to a neighbouring town to celebrate Mass. When the town officials rejected their pleas for their own church, they built one out of snow and ice.
The ice church at Mitterfirmiansreut, near the Czech border, is more than 20 metres long, 10 metres wide and includes a 17 metre tower, Spiegel reports. It can seat 190 people.
It's made up of about 1400 cubic metres of snow.
The structure was bathed in blue light as it opened on Wednesday evening with a blessing from Dean Kajetan Steinbeisser.
The religious radio station, Mü¨nchner Kirchenradio, reports that worship services can be held in the church, but that the Catholic bishop of Passau has ruled out any Masses, baptisms or weddings there for theological reasons, Spiegel says.
When the ancestors of today's villagers built the first snow church in 1911, they weren't thinking just of architectural achievement.
Father Steinbeisser said: "It was meant as an act of provocation - Believers from the village got together and built a snow church because they didn't have a church here."