Danny Boyle, the artistic director of the London Olympic Games opening ceremony, said on Tuesday that the July 27 ceremony will feature British countryside.

He said that the opening scene of the ceremony will be called "Green and Pleasant", adding that the show would create "a picture of ourselves as a nation."

The set will feature meadows, fields and rivers, with families taking picnics, people playing sports on the village green and farmers tilling the soil, the BBC said.

Real farmyard animals will be grazing in the "countryside", with a menagerie of 30 sheep, 12 horses, three cows, two goats, 10 chickens, 10 ducks, nine geese and three sheepdogs.

Europe's largest bell will ring inside the stadium to start the Shakespeare-inspired spectacle, featuring 900 children from the six Games host boroughs.

The stadium's 27-tonne bell was cast at London's Whitechapel Foundry, where 13.5-tonne Big Ben was cast in 1856, and is inscribed with a quote from The Tempest's Caliban: "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises."

It will hang at one end of the stadium, and Boyle said he wanted people to hear it "for hundreds of years".

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