Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Manky.

Listener discretion is advised.

A few years ago, the Russian tourism industry discovered that they had a problem.

That problem was winter.

If you can imagine, the masses weren't flocking to see Russia's historically significant

architecture or world-class art collections when the temperatures dipped below freezing.

That's when even stockpiled provisions of top tier vodka can't manage to unseat the

damp, creeping chill that settles in your chest.

In Russia, in the winter.

And so, in 2006, a group of corporate sponsors and luxury hotel chains came together with

an idea, an ice sculpture to drum up tourism.

Not just an ice sculpture, an ice palace.

A palace constructed entirely of ice in downtown St. Petersburg, one that would weigh over 500

tons at a cost of $150,000.

It was to be an exact replica of a massive ice palace that had stood on the shore of

the frozen Niva River two centuries earlier.

It would be built exactly to the specifications laid out by that 18th century architect.

There were ice trees filled with carved ice birds.

Clocks built for ice with visible ice gears.

Guests waited in line for hours for their chance to walk through the palace, to marvel

at the detail of the carving, to walk through the ice bedroom and see the ice mattress with

ice blankets and ice pillows and cascading ice curtains down the four posters, all made

...