BuildTheEarth Poland, a community project recreating Poland in Minecraft at a 1:1 scale, has shown off the latest stage of its work on Lublin. The city already features Lublin Castle, the Kraków Gate, the Lublin Metropolitan Railway Station, and the Motor Lublin football stadium, and the results have earned praise online for their attention to detail.

What's already standing in virtual Lublin

The presentation comes from the creator behind the BuildTheEarth Poland account, followed by more than 30,000 people on Instagram. The showcased fragments of Lublin in Minecraft include the city's landmark spots: the medieval Lublin Castle, the Gothic-Renaissance Old Town with the Kraków Gate, the modern Lublin Metropolitan Railway Station, and Motor Lublin Arena, home stadium of the Motor Lublin football club.

On the project's BTE Poland page dedicated to Lublin, the city is listed as the 23rd location in the completion ranking, covering an area of 0.86 km² with progress at 0.58%. This is still an early stage: the outlines of the first buildings and street layout are visible, but most of the city still needs to be rebuilt. Lublin poses a particular challenge for builders due to its hills, varied architecture ranging from Renaissance townhouses to a Gothic castle to Baroque churches, and the 14th-century Holy Trinity Chapel with its Byzantine frescoes.

The scale of the whole BuildTheEarth Poland project

Lublin is just one piece of a much larger undertaking. BuildTheEarth Poland has been running since 2020 and is part of the global BuildTheEarth initiative, in which the community is recreating the entire planet in Minecraft at a 1:1 scale, meaning one meter in reality equals one block in the game.

  • The rebuilt area in Poland now exceeds 144 km²
  • More than 727 builders are involved in the project
  • The project is listed in the Guinness World Records as the largest undertaking of its kind in Minecraft
  • Locations already recreated include Warsaw, Poznań, Toruń, Olsztyn, and the sanctuary in Licheń

The creator behind BuildTheEarth Poland, whose Lublin showcase made it into the media, has previously worked on faithful recreations of Toruń, Olsztyn, Licheń, and the regions of Lublin Voivodeship and Lower Silesia. The site previously also reported on visualizations of Przemyśl created as part of the same project.

How to join the build

The project doesn't require a whitelist and is available on the server around the clock. Any owner of Minecraft Java Edition, from version 1.8 up to the latest releases, can join the group of builders working on Polish cities.

Anyone wanting to take part can connect to the server at bte-poland.pl or visit the alternative address bte.mhsv.pl listed on the Lublin page. The project also runs its own Discord, where work on individual locations is coordinated, as well as an interactive map allowing builders to track construction progress in real time. Players interested in building in the world of Minecraft can also check out other Minecraft servers available to Polish players before deciding to join a specific project.

Why online commenters love it

Reactions in the comments under the Lublin showcase focus on the precision of the city's architectural recreation, from the facade details of the Old Town townhouses to the proportions of Lublin Castle. Previous showcases of other Polish cities within the same project have earned similar praise, showing that 1:1 scale building has a steady audience in Poland following the progress closely.

For players interested in creating similar constructions themselves, Minecraft has long remained a tool for recreating real-world places. Anyone wanting to start their own building projects can check out the Minecraft Java Edition download, the version of the game used by most BuildTheEarth servers thanks to its support for mods and tools that make precise terrain recreation easier.

Given how low Lublin's completion percentage still is, the project is still looking for new builders willing to get involved in recreating further parts of the city, from the Old Town to the area around the Motor stadium.

Sources