Making waves: Europe's first underwater restaurant opens in Norway

Europe's first underwater restaurant opened on Wednesday, with more than 7,000 diners already booked in to eat among the fishes – at a cost of €380 per head. The restaurant, sitting at the tip of Norway's southern coast and partly submerged in the North Sea, is called Under – which also means "wonder" in Norwegian. It was designed by Norwegian architecture firm Snoehetta , which also created the Opera house in Oslo and the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York. Entering Under initially feels like going into a sauna, as wooden planks cover its upper section, but an eight-metre flight of stairs leads down to a large dining area that sits around 40 guests, walled by a gigantic window to the water. Snoehetta's founder Kjetil Traedal Thorsen said the construction can cope with very harsh weather and is shaped in such a way that it can withstand what he called "the wave of the century". The restaurant is laid out so there are minimal reflections in the glass wall, which fills the room with natural light during the day, filtered by the greenish colour of the water. A full 18-course meal, based on local ingredients and seafood, can cost up to €380 per person. There are only a handful of underwater restaurants around the world, mainly found in tropical waters such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.