Europe’s largest display of giant Chinese illuminations is to light up Longleat Safari and Adventure Park in Warminster from next Friday.

About 7,000 individual lanterns, 15km of silk and a dazzling 40km of LED lights are being used for a series of stunning tableaux for Longleat’s Festival of Light which will run until January 4.

The highlights of the spectacular event include a 70m-long dragon of 23,000 lit porcelain cups, bowls and plates and mythical creatures called ‘qilin’, which are each made from over 65,000 glass phials filled with coloured liquid.

The outdoor extravaganza also features a 20m-tall Chinese temple, huge traditional Chinese masks, a family of life-sized pandas in a bamboo forest, giant elephants and other animals.

Bob Montgomery, Longleat’s chief executive, said: “The Festival of Light is something truly unique. We are taking the age-old tradition of the Chinese lantern and completely transforming it for a modern audience using giant LED illuminated structures.

“There will be about 20 different scenes to explore within 30 acres featuring literally thousands of individual illuminations, created from a mixture of silk, satin and vinyl-covered fixed frames, and the sheer scale and intricacy of the designs is breathtaking.”

Thirty tonnes of steel has been used to build the frames for the illuminated structures.

A team of 100 highly-skilled craftsmen from the village of Zigong in China’s Sichuan province have spent six months making the structures which will remain at Longleat throughout the festival. Records of lantern festivals in China date back 2,000 years and Zigong is considered to be their spiritual home because of its clever concepts and ground-breaking designs.