A visit to Longleat's Festival of Lights has been on my "to see" list for several years now, and I've only just managed to tick it off my list a couple of weeks ago. Readers will be pleased to know that it was just as amazing as I thought it would be. The Festival of Lights at Longleat is a popular attraction that takes place each year over the darkest months, and each year has a theme. This year's theme is "myths and legends", and it covers myths and legends in different cultures around the world.
The largest area was on Greek mythology with depictions of several gods and goddesses, Icarus and the sun, Hercules fighting a dragon, the hydra, the underworld, Hades and Persephone, the minataur, Medusa, and much more. In with the mix, St. George defeats a dragon.
One of the largest illuminations of all was the projection onto Longleat House of constellations and mythology elements.
The next area depicted a selection of myths and legends across the world: the giant Goliath, the Kracken, a cyclops, Thor, and a snow monster.
From here, visitors went into a tunnel of stars that changed colour and pattern. This was really neat and colourful, and I imagine that this was popular for photographs.
The next area contained a fairy garden with gnomes, faries, and leprechauns amongst illuminated mushrooms.
We also had Merlin and Arthur, King Midas, and "Arabian Nights".
Chinese myths and legends were also explored with the dragon gate. The legend is that there was gate on top of a very high waterfall, and carp that were brave and strong enough that managed to enter through the gate were transformed into dragons.
I had so many photographs that I only posted the best ones here, but there was another section of arctic or polar animals and also rainbow arches with unicorns that looked very pretty but which were extremely busy and popular with people.
Overall, this was a fun day out at Longleat Festival of Lights, and the lanterns were beautiful.
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