The World in Miniature

In the model of St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, the statues of saints on the colonnades wear clothing made of paper napkins from the Wunderland bistro. Credit: Andreas Meichsner for The New York Times
In the model of St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, the statues of saints on the colonnades wear clothing made of paper napkins from the Wunderland bistro. Credit: Andreas Meichsner for The New York Times
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The World in Miniature

In the model of St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, the statues of saints on the colonnades wear clothing made of paper napkins from the Wunderland bistro. Credit: Andreas Meichsner for The New York Times
In the model of St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, the statues of saints on the colonnades wear clothing made of paper napkins from the Wunderland bistro. Credit: Andreas Meichsner for The New York Times

We had an all-encompassing view of Rio de Janeiro and its surroundings: Sugarloaf Mountain, the Christ the Redeemer statue, Copacabana Beach. Architectural novelties like the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum and the Metropolitan Cathedral stood out among the sea of buildings, as trains and streetcars passed by, and thousands of dancers swayed and strutted during the city’s Carnival celebration.

Yet Rio was more than 6,000 miles away, while my husband, son and I stood in a building in the Speicherstadt, the historic warehouse district in Hamburg, Germany.

The scene we admired is one of more than a dozen sprawling exhibits at Miniatur Wunderland, home to the world’s largest model railway and largest miniature airport. The meticulous replica of Rio came on line as Wunderland’s newest exhibit in December 2021, constructed over four years in partnership with a family-owned model-making company out of Argentina.

“Mind-blowing,” my husband said several times during our five hours of marveling at reproductions of Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, the United States and other sites, complete with tiny hand-painted figures participating in the myriad activities of daily life. Through all of the landscapes, trains continually chugged along a total of 16,138 meters (almost 53,000 feet) of track.

The project started in 2000 when the twin brothers Frederik and Gerrit Braun, then 32, dreamed of creating the largest model railroad in the world. The siblings, who grew up as train buffs, wound up running a Hamburg nightclub and record label in the 1990s, but eventually they wanted a lifestyle change. With help from friends and family, the Brauns opened Miniatur Wunderland’s life-size doors in 2001.

In the 21 years since, the attraction has drawn more than 21 million visitors from around the world, becoming one of Germany’s top tourist draws. Yet in the United States, Miniatur Wunderland is primarily known among railroad buffs and other hobbyists.

Count us lucky to have a son, now 15, who has been obsessed with planes, trains, cars and anything else that moves mechanically since he was old enough to point. Lucky because I hadn’t known about Miniatur Wunderland, despite having made numerous trips to Germany, as the daughter of two German-born parents. My son, on the other hand, had been talking about Wunderland for years, ever since he discovered some YouTube videos of it. He was particularly interested in the working airport, which averages 500 takeoffs and landings a day, displayed on a flight monitor (the difference: these model planes are always on time).

So when we planned a trip back to Germany in August to see family in Munich, we added a detour to Hamburg to visit Miniatur Wunderland (and bought tickets online a month in advance for the timed entry). My husband and I wanted to indulge our son, an only child, but what we didn’t anticipate was our own enchantment with this tiny world, full of painstaking detail and technological wizardry, sure, but also bursting with whimsy and humor.

Take the diorama of Italy, for instance. Among the faithful reproductions of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Colosseum and Mount Vesuvius (complete with regular eruptions), there are little moving vignettes, activated by pressing a button (200 such buttons exist throughout Wunderland). In one, Pinocchio’s nose grows six inches across the room of a tiny cottage. Elsewhere, a small Michelangelo bounces on a trampoline to reach the Sistine Chapel ceiling with his paintbrush. Creative license? Absolutely.

“That was the model builder saying, ‘I could have put Michelangelo on scaffolding, but nobody would see it. What could I use instead to show him painting?’” said Thomas Cerny, a software developer and spokesman for Miniatur Wunderland, in a recent phone interview. “The model builders are what make the whole exhibition special. If you know them, you can even tell who built what, as each one has their own sense of humor,” Mr. Cerny added, while sharing with a chuckle that the 100 or so statues of saints on the colonnades in St. Peter’s Square wear clothing made of paper napkins from the Wunderland bistro.

As we moved from exhibit to exhibit, directing each other this way and that to point out some new captivating feature, we appreciated that the landscapes were anything but static. In addition to the trains, cars and boats that travel about (in the Scandinavia section, ships navigate tides in real water), most of the almost inch-high figures are doing something, animated in their depiction if not through actual movement. “As time went on, the model railway became less important, and the storytelling and the creativity became much more important,” Mr. Cerny said.

On the fourth floor, we passed by the central command for all of the exhibits, filled with large screens and electronics. It was like an open kitchen. Not only do the systems that control the trains, vehicles and lighting originate here, but video cameras let staffers monitor things like train derailments and other glitches that can occur with so many moving parts.

We discovered that it’s not always sunny in Miniatur Wunderland, either. Every 12 minutes, the exhibits shift from day to a three-minute-long night, and the real rooms darken as almost half a million LED lights twinkle within the dioramas. Each of those lights is programmed to turn on in sequence rather than all at once, creating a condensed simulation of nightfall. “The brothers are perfectionists,” Mr. Cerny said of the founders.

The New York Times



Rain Further Batters Storm-Hit Portugal, Thousands Evacuated

 A flooded area in Ceira, Coimbra, Portugal, February 11, 2026. (Reuters)
A flooded area in Ceira, Coimbra, Portugal, February 11, 2026. (Reuters)
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Rain Further Batters Storm-Hit Portugal, Thousands Evacuated

 A flooded area in Ceira, Coimbra, Portugal, February 11, 2026. (Reuters)
A flooded area in Ceira, Coimbra, Portugal, February 11, 2026. (Reuters)

More ‌heavy rain flooded several rural areas in the north of storm-battered Portugal on Wednesday, leaving levees at risk of bursting around the medieval city of Coimbra and forcing authorities to evacuate about 3,000 residents as a precaution.

A succession of deadly storms has hammered mostly central and southern parts of the country since late January, blowing roofs off houses, flooding several towns and leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity for days. At least 15 people have died as a consequence of the storms, including indirect ‌victims.

As the ‌storms let up this week, a weather ‌phenomenon ⁠known as an "atmospheric river" - ⁠a wide corridor of concentrated water vapor carrying massive amounts of moisture from the tropics - brought new downpours, affecting the north to a greater extent.

RISK OF DAM OVERFLOWING

Municipal authorities in Coimbra ordered the precautionary evacuation late on Tuesday of around 3,000 people most at risk from the River Mondego bursting its banks, ⁠and the operation was still under way on ‌Wednesday, with police making door-to-door checks ‌and bussing residents to shelters.

Regional Civil Protection official Carlos Tavares ‌said on Wednesday the situation could worsen between late Wednesday ‌and midday Thursday, as the rain could cause the Aguieira dam, 35 km northeast of Coimbra, "to overflow, sweep away levees and trigger further flooding".

Part of Coimbra's ancient city wall, on a hillside in one ‌of Europe's oldest university towns and a UNESCO World Heritage site, collapsed, shutting the road below ⁠and forcing ⁠the closure of the municipal market, the city hall said.

Prime Minister Luis Montenegro was due in Coimbra to oversee the emergency response after Interior Minister Maria Lucia Amaral resigned following criticism from opposition parties and local communities over what they described as the authorities' slow and failed response to devastating Storm Kristin two weeks ago.

In central Portugal, just across the River Tagus from Lisbon, authorities evacuated the village of Porto Brandao due to the risk of landslides, and around 30 people were removed from their homes after a landslide in the neighboring beachside area of Caparica.


Record Heat and Raging Fires Ring in 2026 Across the Southern Hemisphere 

A helicopter battles a forest fire in the Biobio region, where multiple wildfires have prompted emergency evacuations, in Florida, Chile, January 21, 2026. (Reuters)
A helicopter battles a forest fire in the Biobio region, where multiple wildfires have prompted emergency evacuations, in Florida, Chile, January 21, 2026. (Reuters)
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Record Heat and Raging Fires Ring in 2026 Across the Southern Hemisphere 

A helicopter battles a forest fire in the Biobio region, where multiple wildfires have prompted emergency evacuations, in Florida, Chile, January 21, 2026. (Reuters)
A helicopter battles a forest fire in the Biobio region, where multiple wildfires have prompted emergency evacuations, in Florida, Chile, January 21, 2026. (Reuters)

From Argentina to Australia to South Africa, record heat and raging wildfires are rampaging through the Southern Hemisphere at the start of 2026, with scientists predicting that even more extreme temperatures could lie ahead - and possibly another global annual high - after three of the hottest years on record.

In January, a record-setting heat dome enveloped Australia, sending temperatures near 50 degrees C (122 degrees F) while heat and catastrophic wildfires gripped parts of South America, setting remote parts of Argentina's Patagonia ablaze and killing 21 people in coastal towns in Chile. In addition, South Africa has been experiencing its worst wildfires in years.

The extremes are occurring even as the world remains under the cooling influence of a weak La Nina, a climate cycle marked by cooler waters in the central and eastern Pacific that began in December 2024. Despite this moderating factor, temperatures are reaching record highs in various locales.

"This means the effect of human-caused climate change is overwhelming natural variability," said climate scientist Theodore Keeping of Imperial College London and the international research collaboration World Weather Attribution, who specializes in research on wildfires and extreme heat.

"As we transition into a neutral or even El Nino phase, we'll expect the incidence of extreme heat events around the world to be further amplified," Keeping added.

El Nino typically has the opposite effect of La Nina, warming the central and eastern Pacific and boosting global temperatures.

This year is forecast to be about 1.46 degrees C (2.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels, which would make it the fourth consecutive year to be higher than 1.4 degrees C (2.5 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels, according to Adam Scaife, head of the long-range prediction at the United Kingdom's national weather ‌and climate service.

The 2015 ‌international climate treaty, known as the Paris Agreement, aimed to keep warming below 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels.

"If a big ‌El Nino ⁠were to develop ⁠quickly in 2026 then it's still possible 2026 could be a record," Scaife said. The World Meteorological Organization said last month that the past three years were the warmest on record.

FIRE RAGES FROM WOODS TO WATER

While most wildfires are caused by human activity, they are also a natural part of many ecosystems. Persistent heat, drought and extreme temperatures, however, are turning once-manageable fires into increasingly uncontrollable and destructive events.

Many ecosystems are not adapted to such hot, dry conditions, allowing fires to grow larger and more intense, often causing permanent damage, Keeping said.

The fires that burned through Argentina's Los Alerces National Park illustrate the shift, according to meteorologist Carolina Vera of the Center for Ocean and Atmospheric Research at the University of Buenos Aires.

The park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is home to trees that have lived more than 3,000 years.

Local officials determined that a lightning strike caused the fire. The blaze initially was under control. But Vera said a heat wave and strong winds caused it to spread about 20 km (12 miles) in a single day, making it the worst wildfire there ⁠in two decades.

The region has been drought-stricken since 2008. Temperatures during the first two weeks of January were about 6 degrees C (11 degrees F) above ‌normal.

"These fires used to burn themselves out and form part of the forest's natural dynamics," Vera said.

"This is an example of ‌how climate change can alter a natural fire, because it appeared to be caused by lightning," Vera said.

There are no towns in that remote area.

Fires erupted in the southern part of neighboring Chile later in January and ‌crossed into the greater Concepcion area, the country's third-largest metropolitan region, destroying hundreds of homes and killing 21 people in coastal communities.

Keeping said the blazes mirrored recent disasters in places such as ‌Los Angeles, Athens and the Hawaiian island of Maui.

"Where there's been the greatest loss of life, it almost always comes down to evacuation being difficult or impossible," Keeping said. "That's particularly true in regions affected by strong downslope winds toward the coast."

WHIRLWINDS OF FIRE

About 80% of Punta de Parra, a small coastal town in southern Chile surrounded by hills and forests, was destroyed.

Punta de Parra residents said they had little time to evacuate. Doralisa Silva, 34, said she heard about a fire in a nearby community the night the blaze reached the town.

"Out of nowhere, the forest started burning and all the houses caught fire," Silva said. "The fire was on us in the blink ‌of an eye. There was nothing we could do."

Silva said her family was among the last to try to flee because they had no vehicle. Silva said flames blocked their exit as embers rained down as she and her partner Hermes Barrientos fled with their ⁠2-year-old daughter.

Barrientos said winds of nearly 70 km ⁠per hour (43.5 mph) whipped through the area, creating whirlwinds of fire that spread to the beach and trapped residents. The family and others eventually found refuge in a large dirt field at the center of town, and spent the night watching their community burn.

A FUTURE FILLED WITH FIRES

Record-breaking heat in southeastern Australia has also fueled the country's worst fires since the deadly 2019-2020 season, when 33 people were killed.

In addition, the 2025-2026 fire season has been the most severe in South Africa in a decade, according to officials, killing wildlife and hitting tourist destinations such as Mossel Bay and Franschhoek.

"The hot, dry and windy conditions that drive the most extreme wildfires are becoming more intense and more likely," Keeping said. "And it's happening all around the world."

The Southern Hemisphere has warmed by about 0.15 to 0.17 degrees C (0.27 to 0.30 degrees F) per decade since the 1970s, compared to 0.25 to 0.30 degrees C (0.45 to 0.54 degrees F) in the Northern Hemisphere - largely because its vast oceans absorb heat more slowly and because of Antarctic meltwater.

Still, southern land masses are now warming at similar rates to northern land masses, and contrasts between warming land and cold meltwater can intensify weather patterns, leading to prolonged heat waves, droughts or flooding.

Keeping said adaptation is critical, including authorities managing vegetation near cities and developing effective evacuation plans, and builders using fire-resistant materials. Wildfires are inflicting mounting economic damage. A 2026 report by insurance broker Aon estimated global insured wildfire losses at $42 billion in 2025, up from an average of $4 billion annually between 2000 and 2024. The Los Angeles fires last year were the costliest on record.

Swiss Re, the world's second-largest reinsurer, found that wildfires accounted for about 1% of global insured losses from natural disasters before 2015, but now represent 7%, with economic losses linked to fires rising by about $170 million a year since 1970.

"You actually cannot stop a lot of these really large intense wildfires. They're simply too big," Keeping said.

The most important way forward, Keeping said, is to "have a serious conversation about limiting future climate change to prevent this issue from worsening."


Study: Noisy Humans Harm Birds and Affect Breeding Success

FILE - Birdhouses line a path outside a resident's room at the Ida Culver House Ravenna, a senior independent and assisted living home in Seattle, on May 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
FILE - Birdhouses line a path outside a resident's room at the Ida Culver House Ravenna, a senior independent and assisted living home in Seattle, on May 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
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Study: Noisy Humans Harm Birds and Affect Breeding Success

FILE - Birdhouses line a path outside a resident's room at the Ida Culver House Ravenna, a senior independent and assisted living home in Seattle, on May 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
FILE - Birdhouses line a path outside a resident's room at the Ida Culver House Ravenna, a senior independent and assisted living home in Seattle, on May 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

Noise pollution is affecting bird behavior across the globe, disrupting everything from courtship songs to the ability to find food and avoid predators, a large-scale new analysis showed on Wednesday.

Researchers reviewed nearly four decades of scientific work and found that noises made by humans were interfering with the lives of birds on six continents and having "strong negative effects" on reproduction success.

Previous research on individual species has shown that single sources of anthropogenic noise -- such as planes, traffic and construction -- can affect birds as it does other wildlife.

But for this study, the team performed a wider analysis by pooling data published since 1990 across 160 bird species to see if any broader trends could be established.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found clear evidence of a "pervasive" impact of noise pollution on birds worldwide.

"We found that noise significantly impacts communication risk behaviors, foraging, aggression and physiology and had a strong effect on habitat use and a negative impact on reproduction," AFP quoted it as saying.

This is because birds rely on acoustic information to survive, making them particularly vulnerable to the modern din produced by cars, machinery and urban life.

"They use song to find mates, calls to warn of predators, and chicks make begging calls to let their parents know they're hungry," Natalie Madden, who led the research while at the University of Michigan, said in a statement.

"So if there's loud noise in the environment, can they still hear signals from their own species?"

In some cases, noise pollution interrupted mating displays, caused males to change their courtship songs, or masked messages between chicks and parents.

The study included many common species such as European robins and starlings, house sparrows, and great tits.

The response varied between species, with birds that nest close to the ground suffering greater reproductive harm, while those using open nests experienced stronger effects on growth.

Birds living in urban areas, meanwhile, tended to have higher levels of stress hormones than those outside of cities.

Some 61 percent of the world's bird species have declining populations, mostly due to habitat loss driven by expanding agriculture and logging, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said in October.

The study authors said that noise pollution was an "underappreciated consequence" of humanity's impact on nature, especially compared to biodiversity loss and climate change.

But some relatively simple fixes could make a big difference for birds, they said.

Madden told AFP that shifting from noisier cars and landscaping tools such as mowers and leaf blowers to electric-powered alternatives was one idea.

Another could be "running machinery outside peak breeding seasons, avoiding activity when birds are migrating through an area, or shifting construction away from habitats that support vulnerable species", she added.

Buildings could also be adapted to muffle sound in the same way they are constructed to improve visibility and minimize bird collisions, said the study's senior author Neil Carter, from the University of Michigan.

"So many of the things we're facing with biodiversity loss just feel inexorable and massive in scale, but we know how to use different materials and how to put things up in different ways to block sound," he said.