Featured Image Credit: JOHANNES EISELE / Staff / Getty / Yes Theory / YouTube
It’s got elegant boulevards, picturesque apartments, and landscaped gardens complete with beautiful fountains.
There’s even the Eiffel Tower standing in the middle of it, towering over the rest of the city.
But if you guessed Paris, you’d be wrong.
It is in fact the surreal city of Tianducheng, located in Zhejiang province, China.
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Designed as a near-perfect replica of the French capital, the 12-square mile site was completed in 2007 at a cost of over $1 billion.
But despite the scale of the development, for a long time the city remained a ghost town, with barely 2,000 residents calling it home in its first few years of existence.
Because of the city’s remote location, on the edge of the regional capital Hangzhou, long-term residents proved hard to attract.
In contrast to bustling Paris, Tianducheng’s streets were almost empty, with overgrown foliage, and its public fountains running dry.
Nonetheless, the city proved a popular spot for couples and newly-weds looking to get a few romantic snaps in front of the Eiffel Tower or Champs-Élysées without having to book a flight to Europe.
Despite backing onto farmers’ fields and being surrounded by plumes of smoke coming from nearby industrial buildings, the city’s buildings still make for a somewhat convincing replica.
Meanwhile, the showpiece of the development, China’s very own Eiffel Tower, is an almost perfect copy of the original - except for the fact it’s half the height.
For many years it was held up as a typical case study in how China’s urban development policy was failing, with huge towns being built without anyone to live in them.
But things have improved in recent years.
Thanks to increased investment from the central government in Beijing, and the opening of a metro line connecting it to the centre of Hangzhou, its population has now increased to around 30,000.
Vloggers from the channel Yes Theory paid the city a visit last year, and found it to have more life than initially expected.
Although not nearly as crowded as what is usually expected in China, they encountered friendly locals and tourists who seemed proud to call it their home.
As surreal as it is, it’s not the only example of China building its own versions of European landmarks.
‘Thames Town’, located 40-minutes from Shanghai city centre, is an almost perfect replica of a typical English town, right down to red phone boxes.
Complete with pub, fish and chip shop, and gothic parish church, the suburb is home to some of Shanghai’s elite and commands above-average property prices.
It was designed by British firm Atkins and opened in 2006.
